When I initially set out to write this feature, I thought I would simply weave together a film review of I Origins with quotes from director Mike Cahill -- but, given the metaphysical nature of the film and the rather curious circumstances that have led to my watching it, I figure a personal anecdote is in order.

Back in April, I was on tour with a band, and we happened to have a day off in Albuquerque. We filled it with a number of activities, from bowling to thrift store shopping and milkshake drinking -- so when evening came and most others were ready to relax, one friend and I debated over watching Jonathan Glazer's Under The Skin, which I had been hyping all day. He was being wishy-washy, though, and, unable to decide, he finally concluded that I should draw a tarot card to settle the issue. For those unfamiliar with tarot cards, they are more often used for more in-depth divination, but each card can also be assigned yes or no values, with varying degrees of power. The card I received in response to whether we should go watch the film was "The Sun", which is generally known as "the happiest card in the tarot", with very few negative aspects. Hence, drawing it symbolized an emphatic yes to our question.

Under The Skin was a fine film, but remarkably, what actually resonated with me more was the preview trailer for I Origins, which revolves around a series of synchronicities involving the number 11. As Michael Pitt's character, Dr. Ian Grey, narrates for the trailer: "I look at the date; it's 11:11. I look at the time; it's 11:11. I start to see these 11's, everywhere; when I followed them, I found these eyes. I'd like to tell you the story of the eyes that changed this world."

Such synchronicities, staggering in their coincidental unlikelihood, ultimately bring Grey to meeting his incendiary love interest Sofi, played by the beautiful Astrid Bergès-Frisbey. The themes struck home immediately, in a spine-chilling kind of way; I, too, have had similar cosmic moments that have led to the discovery of significant individuals in my life -- including the one I went to see the film with. Hence, given the nature of I Origins, which assigns meaning to every small symbol that leads to the larger unfolding of our colletive lives, that circumstantial flip of the (tarot) coin, so to speak, really did provide a fascinating continuous build-up to my watching the film. (And it gets better...)

The Views Are Subjective -- And Polarizing.

Like many of my favorite movies (Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain comes to mind), I Origins is damned polarizing. It presently has 47% on Rotten Tomatoes, and reviews have critics gasping for air in both the blissfully astonished and offended, incredulous sense. Among the skeptics, one can see comments such as Josh Bell of Las Vegas Weekly's bitter remark of, "The movie's musings are disingenuous at best and infuriating at worst, delivered with a hollow solemnity that the flowery story never warrants."

It is clear that, as with many a metaphysically-minded film, the value you gain from I Origins depends on your relationship to the world at-large, which includes your spiritual sphere of knowledge and, perhaps, whether you think "flowery" is a good or bad thing. As a director, though, Mike Cahill also knows that the true purpose of art is not necessarily to please everyone.

"If they didn't feel it, they didn't feel it. No biggie," says Cahill. "If three people respond to it, then I've found those three people that I want to have dinner with, and those are my like-minded spirit kind, like-minded peeps. And I'll hang out with those people and engage with them with those ideas. We kind of live in cynical times, and that just comes with how it is."

Indeed, we are no longer in the era where Carl Sagan's Cosmos thrives with quotes like:

"We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring."

Instead, we are in the era where Neil deGrasse Tyson's Cosmos sees censorship on prime time television. Given this environment, it serves a scriptwriter well to do his research, which Cahill did.

"Modifying color-blind mice to see color; modifying worms that don't have vision to have vision: those are real experiments done in labs today," Cahill explains. "The idea of an eye being irreducibly complex and scientists proposing theories about the evolution of the eye have existed for a long time; Richard Dawkins is the one who sort of mapped out the evolution of the eye. But it's in laboratories today that we can actually create physical, genetically-modified versions... I worked very, very hard, and very closely with molecular biologists to make this as accurate as possible."

A number of small details contribute to the interpersonal development of the film's characters, as well as tie in Cahill's real-life filmmaking experience with the cinematic narrative. In one scene, Grey sits in a diner and his gaze lands upon Steve McCurry's famous 1985 National Geographic photo of the green-eyed Afghan girl, which provides the original inspiration for I Origins' explorations into locating human beings through iris biometrics.

"When [McCurry] took that photograph, she came through a refugee camp in Pakistan... and every year, after that picture became more and more famous, people would write into National Geographic and Steve and ask, 'What's her name?'" Cahill details. "Seventeen years after that photograph, they went to go and try and find her, and the most striking feature they had was her eyes... scientists from this iris biometric company used this biometric algorithm... and eventually they found her..."

Cahill then began wondering, "What if you could find a person after they died, through the same method?", thus spawning the point where the film's metaphysical ideas begin to connect with its earlier scientific ideas. Its sci-fi label finally begins to poke through once Ian Grey sets out on a search for the reincarnated Sofi. Considering the unlikelihood that iris patterns actually extend through multiple lives, some suspension of disbelief is definitely required during this second part of this film, and the barrier to entry is vastly different for everyone. One such as myself, who already believes in past lives due to personal anecdotal evidence, might easily get on board -- while less accepting critics without such experiences would need to jump over a mighty large hurdle. The fact that I Origins is set in a near future so closely resembling the present only increases the difficulty of suspending that disbelief.

The Details Unfold By Themselves.

What's beautiful, though, is that the polarized reception to I Origins is a meta commentary on the subjective nature of spirituality itself, which is very much experience-oriented. Yet those who say that I Origins is full of "sloppy screenwriting" and "sloppy cinematography" are truly missing the film's incredible attention to detail, which is anything but.

"This film is very carefully constructed to try and achieve a feeling," explains Cahill. "It's not a science paper, but it's certainly a very well-researched work of art..."

Everything is well-contemplated to an unbelievably impressive degree, and peppered throughout the film are a number of markers to back up that assertion. Take, for instance, the film's most ambitious shot -- a double Vertigo shot which concludes during Grey's dizzying journey through the number 11. A homage to Alfred Hitchcock's invention of the Vertigo shot, and to Stanley Kubrick, who Cahill says "was innovating in every single movie ever", the shot is damn near perfect on a conceptual as well as technical level.

"It's rare that you would find yourself with an opportunity to do [a double vertigo shot], but because of the sort of blocking and construction of the shot -- because there's a reflection in the bus and there's a billboard [behind the character] -- it lent itself to [it]," explains Cahill, who had the luxury of using robotic Technocrane, a device where all settings and positions of a camera can be keyed in and replicated over and over again on a memorized timeline. "A vertigo shot just makes you feel literally like, 'Whoooooa, I'm feeling this momenttttttt,' and to do it and then 180 around to reveal what [the character is] looking at... I was using the right tool at the right time; it actually had a purpose.

One can also look to other subtle hints found throughout the film, similar to that of McCurry's photograph in the diner; for example, due to the band's futuristic leanings, Cahill purposely included Radiohead posters in the scene description of Grey's apartment.

"All those little details were written in there as a characterization of Ian's character. [Radiohead] in particular -- Kid A is dedicated to the first human clone, whether it's alive or not -- and it's very sort of instructive of what a real scientist is like today," explains Cahill, who is related to scientists. "They're not necessarily a stiff cliché version of people we see often in Hollywood movies. Scientists are interesting people. They can talk about music; they make love; they are passionate about the world; they just happen to put discovery on a higher scale of priority than things like making money or you know, whatever. They're very noble, extraordinary, ordinary, relatable people, and capturing that is important."

When Cahill was tracking down the rights to use the Radiohead poster, he soon found himself in talks with Radiohead's manager, Bryce Edge, who was a fan of his previous film, Another Earth.

"Radiohead gave us all those songs to use for free, because -- you know, the last film that I did, which was also kind of polarizing, apparently -- they appreciated that. And that was a really reassuring feeling of: when you're making art, you're connecting with people maybe on the other side of the globe, and when I was writing, I was really grateful for that and felt really, really lucky. I still feel really lucky about that with the new work," says Cahill, who expresses that, as an indie film, they could never have afforded a big-budget song.

The film's soundtrack choices definitely lend quite a bit of weight to the film itself. "Dust It Off", by French indie pop arteurs, The Dø, provides a wonderfully dreamy counterpart to the film's romantic moments in a lyrically subjective way. Radiohead's "Motion Picture Soundtrack" plays during the final moments of I Origins, but twas a stroke of incredible luck and synchronicity that the track ended up where it did.

"The part that's weirdest is that I didn't actually have it in mind for the final, final, final scene... We watched the movie, and Bryce said, 'Do you ever think about Motion Picture Soundtrack for there?'" Cahill recalls. "And I took it, and literally placed it right there, where it was sort of silent. It was very temp at the time, and the break in the song, where it starts moving louder, occurs exactly when it cuts to the stairs, and when [Ian Grey] walks out the door, it says, 'I will see you in the next life,' and then it fades out. The timings were so precise that I didn't have to change the cut; and we all looked at each other and said, 'Alright, this was meant to be,' and he was like, 'Alright, you can have it.'"

"Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together." - Carl Sagan

The Meanings Are Self-Assigned.

The day after I watched I Origins at the Seattle International Film Festival, I was riding the bus home from Seattle to Portland. When I awoke from a nap, I Origins was fresh on my mind, and I pulled up Radiohead's "Motion Picture Soundtrack", plotting how I might fit it into my FM radio show later that day.

Throughout I Origins, doors, both open and closed, are representative of one's willingness or unwillingness to enter into the great spiritual unknown. I thought again to Cahill's story about how the sentence, "I will see you in the next life," fit perfectly into the end of the film, when a set of doors open into a white void of sunlight, symbolic of personal transformation. It dawned on me then that the I had just done the same drive from Portland exactly one week prior, with the previously mentioned band, who I have always felt an intense past-life connection with. For a moment, I debated over whether that feeling was mutual, and whether that thought was rooted in reality or merely my own twisted fantasies. Yet right when I remembered that we stayed at a hotel near Emerald Queen Casino, I looked up to see the casino's green and yellow billboard passing by in a blur. In my headphones, Radiohead's "I will see you in the next life" line rang out, its exact timing within milliseconds of this locational specificity.

With such curious life happenings, what can I say about a film like I Origins, which polarizes to such a huge degree, except that it's important that films like this are being made. The gap between the spiritual and the scientific may not be as big as we might think, especially as quantum physics makes it increasingly clear that we know much less than we ever thought about the way of the natural world. Perhaps the importance of art and sci-fi is to draw attention to this subjectivity.

"Science fiction is the literature of ideas, and you're really able to use analogy to explain feelings that we have..." explains Cahill. "In the beginning, or at least in the way she's presented, [Sofi] has one toe on the ground and the rest is sort of in the clouds, but she actually has a great deal of wisdom. That's shown in the laboratory and she's talking about the worm. She says, 'You know, they have two senses and you modify them to have three; so it follows that our five senses are by no means the limit.' So in a way, she uses his work as an analogy for her point of view, and all of a sudden, and he realizes that. And I think that's kind of, in a way, what science fiction does; it uses analogy to get it closer to some truth, hopefully."

"The same sort of thing is in this great book called Flatlands by Edwin Abbott... in it, a line falls in love with a sphere, and the line can only experience the sphere as a line that grows longer and shrinks shorter, based on whether the sphere is going in or out of the plane," Cahill continues. "It's a beautiful book to explain perception and how many dimensions we can perceive. Any scientist that is trying to grasp with coincidence, or intuitive feelings of, 'Oh, I feel like I've known you forever,' or whatever sort of inexplicable things that often are the fuel for conspiracy theories or religious narrative: it's very easy to just say, 'Wait a second; our perception is limited to these five senses and things we can test with scientific method, but there's totally a domain beyond that.'"

Mike Cahill: if you're reading this, I honestly do think we should grab dinner. Send me an e-mail!

When I initially set out to write this feature, I thought I would simply weave together a film review of I Origins with quotes from director Mike Cahill -- but, given the metaphysical nature of the film and the rather curious circumstances that have led to my watching it, I figure a personal anecdote is in order.Back in April, I was on tour with a band, and we happened to have a day off in Albuquerque. We filled it with a number of activities, from bowling to thrift store shopping and milkshake drinking -- so when evening came and most others were ready to relax, one friend and I debated over watching Jonathan Glazer's Under The Skin, which I had been hyping all day. He was being wishy-washy, though, and, unable to decide, he finally concluded that I should draw a tarot card to settle the issue. For those unfamiliar with tarot cards, they are more often used for more in-depth divination, but each card can also be assigned yes or no values, with varying degrees of power. The card I received in response to whether we should go watch the film was "The Sun", which is generally known as "the happiest card in the tarot", with very few negative aspects. Hence, drawing it symbolized an emphatic yes to our question.

Under The Skin was a fine film, but remarkably, what actually resonated with me more was the preview trailer for I Origins, which revolves around a series of synchronicities involving the number 11. As Michael Pitt's character, Dr. Ian Grey, narrates for the trailer: "I look at the date; it's 11:11. I look at the time; it's 11:11. I start to see these 11's, everywhere; when I followed them, I found these eyes. I'd like to tell you the story of the eyes that changed this world."
Such synchronicities, staggering in their coincidental unlikelihood, ultimately bring Grey to meeting his incendiary love interest Sofi, played by the beautiful Astrid Bergès-Frisbey. The themes struck home immediately, in a spine-chilling kind of way; I, too, have had similar cosmic moments that have led to the discovery of significant individuals in my life -- including the one I went to see the film with. Hence, given the nature of I Origins, which assigns meaning to every small symbol that leads to the larger unfolding of our colletive lives, that circumstantial flip of the (tarot) coin, so to speak, really did provide a fascinating continuous build-up to my watching the film. (And it gets better...)

The Views Are Subjective -- And Polarizing.

Like many of my favorite movies (Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain comes to mind), I Origins is damned polarizing. It presently has 47% on Rotten Tomatoes, and reviews have critics gasping for air in both the blissfully astonished and offended, incredulous sense. Among the skeptics, one can see comments such as Josh Bell of Las Vegas Weekly's bitter remark of, "The movie's musings are disingenuous at best and infuriating at worst, delivered with a hollow solemnity that the flowery story never warrants."
It is clear that, as with many a metaphysically-minded film, the value you gain from I Origins depends on your relationship to the world at-large, which includes your spiritual sphere of knowledge and, perhaps, whether you think "flowery" is a good or bad thing. As a director, though, Mike Cahill also knows that the true purpose of art is not necessarily to please everyone.
"If they didn't feel it, they didn't feel it. No biggie," says Cahill. "If three people respond to it, then I've found those three people that I want to have dinner with, and those are my like-minded spirit kind, like-minded peeps. And I'll hang out with those people and engage with them with those ideas. We kind of live in cynical times, and that just comes with how it is."
Indeed, we are no longer in the era where Carl Sagan's Cosmos thrives with quotes like:

"We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring."

Instead, we are in the era where Neil deGrasse Tyson's Cosmos sees censorship on prime time television. Given this environment, it serves a scriptwriter well to do his research, which Cahill did.
"Modifying color-blind mice to see color; modifying worms that don't have vision to have vision: those are real experiments done in labs today," Cahill explains. "The idea of an eye being irreducibly complex and scientists proposing theories about the evolution of the eye have existed for a long time; Richard Dawkins is the one who sort of mapped out the evolution of the eye. But it's in laboratories today that we can actually create physical, genetically-modified versions... I worked very, very hard, and very closely with molecular biologists to make this as accurate as possible."
A number of small details contribute to the interpersonal development of the film's characters, as well as tie in Cahill's real-life filmmaking experience with the cinematic narrative. In one scene, Grey sits in a diner and his gaze lands upon Steve McCurry's famous 1985 National Geographic photo of the green-eyed Afghan girl, which provides the original inspiration for I Origins' explorations into locating human beings through iris biometrics.
"When [McCurry] took that photograph, she came through a refugee camp in Pakistan... and every year, after that picture became more and more famous, people would write into National Geographic and Steve and ask, 'What's her name?'" Cahill details. "Seventeen years after that photograph, they went to go and try and find her, and the most striking feature they had was her eyes... scientists from this iris biometric company used this biometric algorithm... and eventually they found her..."
Cahill then began wondering, "What if you could find a person after they died, through the same method?", thus spawning the point where the film's metaphysical ideas begin to connect with its earlier scientific ideas. Its sci-fi label finally begins to poke through once Ian Grey sets out on a search for the reincarnated Sofi. Considering the unlikelihood that iris patterns actually extend through multiple lives, some suspension of disbelief is definitely required during this second part of this film, and the barrier to entry is vastly different for everyone. One such as myself, who already believes in past lives due to personal anecdotal evidence, might easily get on board -- while less accepting critics without such experiences would need to jump over a mighty large hurdle. The fact that I Origins is set in a near future so closely resembling the present only increases the difficulty of suspending that disbelief.

The Details Unfold By Themselves.

What's beautiful, though, is that the polarized reception to I Origins is a meta commentary on the subjective nature of spirituality itself, which is very much experience-oriented. Yet those who say that I Origins is full of "sloppy screenwriting" and "sloppy cinematography" are truly missing the film's incredible attention to detail, which is anything but.
"This film is very carefully constructed to try and achieve a feeling," explains Cahill. "It's not a science paper, but it's certainly a very well-researched work of art..."
Everything is well-contemplated to an unbelievably impressive degree, and peppered throughout the film are a number of markers to back up that assertion. Take, for instance, the film's most ambitious shot -- a double Vertigo shot which concludes during Grey's dizzying journey through the number 11. A homage to Alfred Hitchcock's invention of the Vertigo shot, and to Stanley Kubrick, who Cahill says "was innovating in every single movie ever", the shot is damn near perfect on a conceptual as well as technical level.
"It's rare that you would find yourself with an opportunity to do [a double vertigo shot], but because of the sort of blocking and construction of the shot -- because there's a reflection in the bus and there's a billboard [behind the character] -- it lent itself to [it]," explains Cahill, who had the luxury of using robotic Technocrane, a device where all settings and positions of a camera can be keyed in and replicated over and over again on a memorized timeline. "A vertigo shot just makes you feel literally like, 'Whoooooa, I'm feeling this momenttttttt,' and to do it and then 180 around to reveal what [the character is] looking at... I was using the right tool at the right time; it actually had a purpose.
One can also look to other subtle hints found throughout the film, similar to that of McCurry's photograph in the diner; for example, due to the band's futuristic leanings, Cahill purposely included Radiohead posters in the scene description of Grey's apartment.
"All those little details were written in there as a characterization of Ian's character. [Radiohead] in particular -- Kid A is dedicated to the first human clone, whether it's alive or not -- and it's very sort of instructive of what a real scientist is like today," explains Cahill, who is related to scientists. "They're not necessarily a stiff cliché version of people we see often in Hollywood movies. Scientists are interesting people. They can talk about music; they make love; they are passionate about the world; they just happen to put discovery on a higher scale of priority than things like making money or you know, whatever. They're very noble, extraordinary, ordinary, relatable people, and capturing that is important."
When Cahill was tracking down the rights to use the Radiohead poster, he soon found himself in talks with Radiohead's manager, Bryce Edge, who was a fan of his previous film, Another Earth.
"Radiohead gave us all those songs to use for free, because -- you know, the last film that I did, which was also kind of polarizing, apparently -- they appreciated that. And that was a really reassuring feeling of: when you're making art, you're connecting with people maybe on the other side of the globe, and when I was writing, I was really grateful for that and felt really, really lucky. I still feel really lucky about that with the new work," says Cahill, who expresses that, as an indie film, they could never have afforded a big-budget song.

The film's soundtrack choices definitely lend quite a bit of weight to the film itself. "Dust It Off", by French indie pop arteurs, The Dø, provides a wonderfully dreamy counterpart to the film's romantic moments in a lyrically subjective way. Radiohead's "Motion Picture Soundtrack" plays during the final moments of I Origins, but twas a stroke of incredible luck and synchronicity that the track ended up where it did.
"The part that's weirdest is that I didn't actually have it in mind for the final, final, final scene... We watched the movie, and Bryce said, 'Do you ever think about Motion Picture Soundtrack for there?'" Cahill recalls. "And I took it, and literally placed it right there, where it was sort of silent. It was very temp at the time, and the break in the song, where it starts moving louder, occurs exactly when it cuts to the stairs, and when [Ian Grey] walks out the door, it says, 'I will see you in the next life,' and then it fades out. The timings were so precise that I didn't have to change the cut; and we all looked at each other and said, 'Alright, this was meant to be,' and he was like, 'Alright, you can have it.'"

"Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together." - Carl Sagan

The Meanings Are Self-Assigned.

The day after I watched I Origins at the Seattle International Film Festival, I was riding the bus home from Seattle to Portland. When I awoke from a nap, I Origins was fresh on my mind, and I pulled up Radiohead's "Motion Picture Soundtrack", plotting how I might fit it into my FM radio show later that day.
Throughout I Origins, doors, both open and closed, are representative of one's willingness or unwillingness to enter into the great spiritual unknown. I thought again to Cahill's story about how the sentence, "I will see you in the next life," fit perfectly into the end of the film, when a set of doors open into a white void of sunlight, symbolic of personal transformation. It dawned on me then that the I had just done the same drive from Portland exactly one week prior, with the previously mentioned band, who I have always felt an intense past-life connection with. For a moment, I debated over whether that feeling was mutual, and whether that thought was rooted in reality or merely my own twisted fantasies. Yet right when I remembered that we stayed at a hotel near Emerald Queen Casino, I looked up to see the casino's green and yellow billboard passing by in a blur. In my headphones, Radiohead's "I will see you in the next life" line rang out, its exact timing within milliseconds of this locational specificity.
With such curious life happenings, what can I say about a film like I Origins, which polarizes to such a huge degree, except that it's important that films like this are being made. The gap between the spiritual and the scientific may not be as big as we might think, especially as quantum physics makes it increasingly clear that we know much less than we ever thought about the way of the natural world. Perhaps the importance of art and sci-fi is to draw attention to this subjectivity.
"Science fiction is the literature of ideas, and you're really able to use analogy to explain feelings that we have..." explains Cahill. "In the beginning, or at least in the way she's presented, [Sofi] has one toe on the ground and the rest is sort of in the clouds, but she actually has a great deal of wisdom. That's shown in the laboratory and she's talking about the worm. She says, 'You know, they have two senses and you modify them to have three; so it follows that our five senses are by no means the limit.' So in a way, she uses his work as an analogy for her point of view, and all of a sudden, and he realizes that. And I think that's kind of, in a way, what science fiction does; it uses analogy to get it closer to some truth, hopefully."
"The same sort of thing is in this great book called Flatlands by Edwin Abbott... in it, a line falls in love with a sphere, and the line can only experience the sphere as a line that grows longer and shrinks shorter, based on whether the sphere is going in or out of the plane," Cahill continues. "It's a beautiful book to explain perception and how many dimensions we can perceive. Any scientist that is trying to grasp with coincidence, or intuitive feelings of, 'Oh, I feel like I've known you forever,' or whatever sort of inexplicable things that often are the fuel for conspiracy theories or religious narrative: it's very easy to just say, 'Wait a second; our perception is limited to these five senses and things we can test with scientific method, but there's totally a domain beyond that.'"

Mike Cahill: if you're reading this, I honestly do think we should grab dinner. Send me an e-mail!

Since creativity first sparked, whether with cave drawings, landscape paintings, or outdoor installations, nature and art have been intertwined in constant evolution alongside humanity itself. Now, with increased reliance on computer technology, comes naturalistic artwork such as that of multi-disciplinary artist Mark Dorf, who combines his life-long love of the sciences and geography with digital technologies such as 3D rendering and programming. The resulting works merge gradients, color blocks, and generated forms with photography, creating holographic spaces and manipulating existing ones.

"I see art as a reflection of our cultural environment -- social issues and current events are inherently reflected in art. Whether we intend to or not, as creators, we react to everything that we come in contact with either consciously or subconsciously; we are a product of our environment. As a result, the more science and technology that is present in our everyday lives, the more and more I think it will become present in contemporary art. In the past few years, there has been an incredible amount of new art based around technology and the internet, which unsurprisingly reflects the incredible rise of technology and the omnipotent presence of the web that we have in our day to day experiences."- Mark Dorf, on the merging of art, science, and technology

This column is a part of our Geometric Spaces series, which explores artistic transformations of 3-dimensional space.

The Parallels Between Artistic Creation & Scientific Rigor

Dorf's most recent series, Emergence, grew out of a residency at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in central Colorado, where he was given the rare opportunity of working alongside biologists and ecologists to experience the scientific process firsthand.

"I would spend many of my mornings and afternoons assisting and helping with the resident scientists field research; this spanned anywhere from counting flowers in a given plot that populations are measured from over time to collecting bee samples from hives set up in a certain area, or even tagging hummingbirds in order to track their migratory patterns," recalls Dorf. "Through these experiences I was given a glimpse into how the landscape is broken down, dissected, and reassembled into other forms within their studies."

The dominant theme of Emergence is drawn from such hands-on learning, after which Dorf realized that the trajectory some artists share with scientists is more similar than he would have imagined.

"At the most basic level, a scientist asks but one question then spends time doing research and collecting data on how to answer this question. This question, of course, can spawn new questions that need to be answered before the original question can be solved, so the process can become quite complex very fast. But at the end of the day, a scientist is merely describing our surroundings in an analytical and quantitative fashion," he says. "I find that artists do nearly exactly the same thing, albeit in a less quantitative fashion (sometimes)."

When Dorf begins a new body of work, it typically comes from a specific interest that he finds himself researching continually over a span of time. Before he knows it, though, he gradually begins to create new work based on the subject he has been researching.

"It's the happiest of accidents that seems to keep happening over and over again," he explains. "[Scientists and artists] both describe our surroundings and our existence; it seems just to be in a different language."

Through the years, Dorf's process has changed, and his experience at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory marked a big turning point.

"In past bodies of work such as Axiom & Simulation and Environmental Occupations, I would actually draw every composition before I ever picked up a camera. I would draw the landscape I desired to find in full, with all of the digital and composited materials and forms included, then search for a landscape that fit the mold that I had created – a real labor of love, as if something was just a bit off in the landscape I would move on and not even take the photograph," explains Dorf. "The end result, though, is far more rewarding, as there is an incredible sense of achievement when you see the final work fully realized just as you originally intended."

"In my most recent series, Emergence, my process was a bit different," he continues. "I would spend my days hiking, exploring, and finding landscapes in the Rockies without the final composition in mind other than that I knew the image would eventually be cropped square. I took a more scientific approach since I was working with scientists while I was out there; I collected my 'data', the photographic image, then began asking questions afterwards with the added elements that are included in the final composition, just as a scientist might do with the collected data set."

MARK DORF - EMERGENCE SERIES

Endless Landscapes of Form & Inspiration

Environment always been important to Dorf, who moved fairly recently from Hudson, New York, to Brooklyn. Despite the fact that Hudson provided a more naturally beautiful landscape and was the basis for most of his entire series, Axiom & Simulation, Brooklyn offers an artist community and a degree of idea exchange that the more remote city never did. Nonetheless, though Dorf says that every city he has lived in has supplied something uniquely valuable, he now finds traveling more important than ever for his artistic practice. A 2012 visit to Iceland, which gave Dorf the opportunity to work on Axiom & Simulation through the Nes Artist Residency, introduced him to what has been the most inspiring landscape he has visited thus far: the Westfjords of Iceland.

Dorf still has many landscapes to visit; he has never been to the desert and the Middle East is near the top of his list -- but a visit to Iceland in 2012, which gave Dorf the opportunity to work on his Axiom & Simulation project through the Nes Artist Residency, introduced him to what has been the most

"It's just so vast and empty out there with endless lava fields covered in the softest moss you've ever touched in your life," he explains.

Iceland peaked his interest in visiting northern Norway, Svalbard, and Greenland, and Dorf is excited about someday seeing the desert and the Middle East -- yet despite the obvious benefits of traveling for one's craft, there can sometimes be unforeseen challenges, as well.

"It's always scary when you travel to make a project, and then once you're there, all of a sudden you hit a creative bump in the road that you didn't see coming. Then the landscape becomes this sort of torturous element -- everything around you could be perfect for what you are trying to make, but because your creative compass had been knocked for one reason or another, it's rendered worthless," Dorf recalls, about a segment of his trip to Iceland. "When this happens, it's hard even to enjoy the landscape for its sheer beauty and environment."

MARK DORF - AXIOM & SIMULATION

Technological Artistic Futures

Though it may lack a consistent geographical space in the physical world, Dorf sees his works as a part of a connected "strange fictitious environment", even as it spans many mediums. As a part of his //_PATH series, which merges 3D renderings with photography and primitive 3D scanning technology, Dorf has also utilized his schooling in Sculpture and Photography to create luminous sculptural works under the subseries //_RUBY. //_PATH has a notably more digitized look than other series like Emergence and Axiom & Simulation, and appropriately, it comments on the pervasive dependence of the internet and how "it is no longer about logging on or off, but rather living within and creating harmony with the realms and constructs of the internet for our newest generation of inhabitants."

Dorf also takes this merging of technology one step further with his Parallels series, which he created in part with glitch artist Adam Ferriss.

"A lot of my work has to do with science and technology, but I would by no means consider myself a developer," says Dorf. "I can navigate my ways through the Processing coding language a little, but that's about as far as I get."

With a clear vision for interactive pieces in the series but lacking some of the technical abilities, Dorf decided to contact Ferriss, knowing that they had similar artistic trajectories. Both studied photography in college, only to take what he calls "a pretty far turn into the world of technology and digital media."

"Knowing his earlier works I could see that our minds would align well, and sure enough they did," says Dorf.

MARK DORF - //_PATH SERIES

//_PATH featured the use of primitive 3D scanning techniques, and for PARALLELS, Dorf wanted to take that technology one step further, but incorporating the possibilities of motion and movement found within the 3D rendering space.

"I was then commissioned to make new works for Neverlandspace, an online venue for web-based digital art, which is really what started the rock rolling downhill," he explains. "All of the figures that are seen are raw 3D scans of my torso and head. I then composited them together with animated elements that I created in a 3D rendering program."

With Ferriss's help, the PARALLELS series (view it HERE) features a number of .gif-like moving images, alongside generative forms coded in a language called three.js, that turn pixel clusters into exploding constellations at the click of a mouse. Together, they are an exciting look into the cross-pollination of art, technology, and science that is ever-expanding in more complicated ways, and are merely a hint into the scope of Dorf's future work. Though it is too early for him to reveal the projects he is currently working on, Dorf does guarantee one thing.

"You can expect a stronger tie with technology," he promises. "I can say that much."

Since creativity first sparked, whether with cave drawings, landscape paintings, or outdoor installations, nature and art have been intertwined in constant evolution alongside humanity itself. Now, with increased reliance on computer technology, comes naturalistic artwork such as that of multi-disciplinary artist Mark Dorf, who combines his life-long love of the sciences and geography with digital technologies such as 3D rendering and programming. The resulting works merge gradients, color blocks, and generated forms with photography, creating holographic spaces and manipulating existing ones.

"I see art as a reflection of our cultural environment -- social issues and current events are inherently reflected in art. Whether we intend to or not, as creators, we react to everything that we come in contact with either consciously or subconsciously; we are a product of our environment. As a result, the more science and technology that is present in our everyday lives, the more and more I think it will become present in contemporary art. In the past few years, there has been an incredible amount of new art based around technology and the internet, which unsurprisingly reflects the incredible rise of technology and the omnipotent presence of the web that we have in our day to day experiences."
- Mark Dorf, on the merging of art, science, and technology

This column is a part of our Geometric Spaces series, which explores artistic transformations of 3-dimensional space.

The Parallels Between Artistic Creation & Scientific Rigor

Dorf's most recent series, Emergence, grew out of a residency at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in central Colorado, where he was given the rare opportunity of working alongside biologists and ecologists to experience the scientific process firsthand.
"I would spend many of my mornings and afternoons assisting and helping with the resident scientists field research; this spanned anywhere from counting flowers in a given plot that populations are measured from over time to collecting bee samples from hives set up in a certain area, or even tagging hummingbirds in order to track their migratory patterns," recalls Dorf. "Through these experiences I was given a glimpse into how the landscape is broken down, dissected, and reassembled into other forms within their studies."
The dominant theme of Emergence is drawn from such hands-on learning, after which Dorf realized that the trajectory some artists share with scientists is more similar than he would have imagined.
"At the most basic level, a scientist asks but one question then spends time doing research and collecting data on how to answer this question. This question, of course, can spawn new questions that need to be answered before the original question can be solved, so the process can become quite complex very fast. But at the end of the day, a scientist is merely describing our surroundings in an analytical and quantitative fashion," he says. "I find that artists do nearly exactly the same thing, albeit in a less quantitative fashion (sometimes)."
When Dorf begins a new body of work, it typically comes from a specific interest that he finds himself researching continually over a span of time. Before he knows it, though, he gradually begins to create new work based on the subject he has been researching.
"It's the happiest of accidents that seems to keep happening over and over again," he explains. "[Scientists and artists] both describe our surroundings and our existence; it seems just to be in a different language."
Through the years, Dorf's process has changed, and his experience at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory marked a big turning point.
"In past bodies of work such as Axiom & Simulation and Environmental Occupations, I would actually draw every composition before I ever picked up a camera. I would draw the landscape I desired to find in full, with all of the digital and composited materials and forms included, then search for a landscape that fit the mold that I had created – a real labor of love, as if something was just a bit off in the landscape I would move on and not even take the photograph," explains Dorf. "The end result, though, is far more rewarding, as there is an incredible sense of achievement when you see the final work fully realized just as you originally intended."
"In my most recent series, Emergence, my process was a bit different," he continues. "I would spend my days hiking, exploring, and finding landscapes in the Rockies without the final composition in mind other than that I knew the image would eventually be cropped square. I took a more scientific approach since I was working with scientists while I was out there; I collected my 'data', the photographic image, then began asking questions afterwards with the added elements that are included in the final composition, just as a scientist might do with the collected data set."
MARK DORF - EMERGENCE SERIES

Endless Landscapes of Form & Inspiration

Environment always been important to Dorf, who moved fairly recently from Hudson, New York, to Brooklyn. Despite the fact that Hudson provided a more naturally beautiful landscape and was the basis for most of his entire series, Axiom & Simulation, Brooklyn offers an artist community and a degree of idea exchange that the more remote city never did. Nonetheless, though Dorf says that every city he has lived in has supplied something uniquely valuable, he now finds traveling more important than ever for his artistic practice. A 2012 visit to Iceland, which gave Dorf the opportunity to work on Axiom & Simulation through the Nes Artist Residency, introduced him to what has been the most inspiring landscape he has visited thus far: the Westfjords of Iceland.
Dorf still has many landscapes to visit; he has never been to the desert and the Middle East is near the top of his list -- but a visit to Iceland in 2012, which gave Dorf the opportunity to work on his Axiom & Simulation project through the Nes Artist Residency, introduced him to what has been the most
"It's just so vast and empty out there with endless lava fields covered in the softest moss you've ever touched in your life," he explains.
Iceland peaked his interest in visiting northern Norway, Svalbard, and Greenland, and Dorf is excited about someday seeing the desert and the Middle East -- yet despite the obvious benefits of traveling for one's craft, there can sometimes be unforeseen challenges, as well.
"It's always scary when you travel to make a project, and then once you're there, all of a sudden you hit a creative bump in the road that you didn't see coming. Then the landscape becomes this sort of torturous element -- everything around you could be perfect for what you are trying to make, but because your creative compass had been knocked for one reason or another, it's rendered worthless," Dorf recalls, about a segment of his trip to Iceland. "When this happens, it's hard even to enjoy the landscape for its sheer beauty and environment."
MARK DORF - AXIOM & SIMULATION

Technological Artistic Futures

Though it may lack a consistent geographical space in the physical world, Dorf sees his works as a part of a connected "strange fictitious environment", even as it spans many mediums. As a part of his //_PATH series, which merges 3D renderings with photography and primitive 3D scanning technology, Dorf has also utilized his schooling in Sculpture and Photography to create luminous sculptural works under the subseries //_RUBY. //_PATH has a notably more digitized look than other series like Emergence and Axiom & Simulation, and appropriately, it comments on the pervasive dependence of the internet and how "it is no longer about logging on or off, but rather living within and creating harmony with the realms and constructs of the internet for our newest generation of inhabitants."
Dorf also takes this merging of technology one step further with his Parallels series, which he created in part with glitch artist Adam Ferriss.
"A lot of my work has to do with science and technology, but I would by no means consider myself a developer," says Dorf. "I can navigate my ways through the Processing coding language a little, but that's about as far as I get."
With a clear vision for interactive pieces in the series but lacking some of the technical abilities, Dorf decided to contact Ferriss, knowing that they had similar artistic trajectories. Both studied photography in college, only to take what he calls "a pretty far turn into the world of technology and digital media."
"Knowing his earlier works I could see that our minds would align well, and sure enough they did," says Dorf.
MARK DORF - //_PATH SERIES//_PATH featured the use of primitive 3D scanning techniques, and for PARALLELS, Dorf wanted to take that technology one step further, but incorporating the possibilities of motion and movement found within the 3D rendering space.
"I was then commissioned to make new works for Neverlandspace, an online venue for web-based digital art, which is really what started the rock rolling downhill," he explains. "All of the figures that are seen are raw 3D scans of my torso and head. I then composited them together with animated elements that I created in a 3D rendering program."
With Ferriss's help, the PARALLELS series (view it HERE) features a number of .gif-like moving images, alongside generative forms coded in a language called three.js, that turn pixel clusters into exploding constellations at the click of a mouse. Together, they are an exciting look into the cross-pollination of art, technology, and science that is ever-expanding in more complicated ways, and are merely a hint into the scope of Dorf's future work. Though it is too early for him to reveal the projects he is currently working on, Dorf does guarantee one thing.
"You can expect a stronger tie with technology," he promises. "I can say that much."
MARK DORF - //_PATH SERIES

"The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the very first time." - Friedrich Nietzsche

On his new EP Kok, occasional Röyksopp collaborator, Bjørn Torske relies on our abilities to remember, rather than forget, as the spur to engagement with and enjoyment of his music.

Concerned, amongst other things, with aural and spacial effects, the record is born of experimentation with different instruments, objects, and their sonic footprints within different acoustic spaces. Merging a lo-fi folk aesthetic with elements of outsider experimentation this is an interesting progression from his last release of 2007, Feil Knapp.

Whether through voice, instruments, or electronically-produced sounds, these emissions are deployed and recorded in various spaces to form an inspirational trigger in the creative process. Through this process of what is known as "worldizing", Torske seeks to escape the straitjacket of reverb plug-ins whose room emulations and mathematical logarithms are often predictable.

There are a number of interesting interactions at play in our unconscious harvesting of real world sounds, and it is these that the accomplished "worldizer" can draw upon. There is, for example, the immediate process known as echoic memory, first coined by Ulric Neisser in 1967. One of the sensory memory registers, echoic memory is a process by which sounds are perceived and held in what is known as a "holding tank", so that the stimuli can reach both ears before processing by the brain begins. This process is, in itself, short-lived. There has, however, been much work done on longer term effects, as in R.M. Schafer's "Sound, Romance and Nostalgia", which focuses on how each of us builds up a framework of remembered sound preferences that, once learned, provoke nostalgic reactions in later years. The basic premise of this work is that, as new sounds are encountered throughout life, tensions are created that engender a nostalgic desire for older sounds.

Our brains are predisposed to the visual, or what is known as iconic memory; however, the potency of the aural is such that an encounter with a particular sound can evoke a powerful conditioned response. In her piece "Movement, Memory & The Studies In Soundscape Studies", Jennifer Schine explores the "hearing-point memory", or, more expressly, how both the emotional state of the listener and its interaction with the memory are complicit in the subsequent recollection. Each memory, when re-experienced, is a product of a layering of different interfacing elements and, in this way, is constantly transitional.

It is, perhaps, this subtly fugitive but ever-changing quality that Torske seeks to capture on this EP. Through his use of "worldizing", and a process which involves editing and overdubbing these recordings, he seeks to use the chaos of real acoustics interactions to stimulate and drive forward the creative process and trigger reactions in the listener.

As an opening track, "Emmaus (Prelude)" sets the scene. It is repetitive, quirky, and short, relying on three interlacing melodies -- one of which is clumsily bashed out (all the better enhance its real world credibility) on a glockenspiel.

The use of repetition, which forms the basis of most of the tracks, is interesting in that it nods to the now firmly entrenched vogue for digital loops, and in doing so adds a further humorous edge to this music. "Assistenten", the second track on the EP, builds in this way, with a repeated guitar part, whilst introducing comic tortured voices that are reminiscent of that Dada-esque vocal ramblings on Gong's Camembert Electrique. Fluffed instrumentation also, once again, assumes its authenticating and contradictory role.

In the world of outsider music few instruments speak of backwoods oddness more than the banjo. Before Mumford and Sons made the acoustic and homespun fashionable again, banjos, at one time perhaps the most uncool of instruments, represented the quintessence of the strange. It is to this legacy that Torske looks in the track "Setter". Here a sinister interplay occurs between several parts, all twanged in unison on the evocative membrane enhance percussive sound of this simple stringed instrument. Close clicking bayou rhythms join the refrain along with a shambling distant female chorus that has echoes of Doctor John's excellent Gris-Gris album.

"Totem Expose" is more out and out experimentation, formed of phased and manipulated electronic sounds, and this journey into abstraction is completed in the final track "Nestor", which seems to owe much to the early electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire's tape experiments.

As a document, Kok, appears in some ways to be a personal survey of the origins and outcomes of experimental sound recording and electronic music. Its analogue atmospheres of real world recordings is effective, and the resultant EP is an interesting listen which, whilst not startling, is well worth attention.

The use of instruments and recordings, played and then re-recorded in different spaces to capture the musicality and effects of those acoustic environments, adds a necessary fillip. Whilst never dominating the foreground as an overarching concept, this process succeeds in holding the EP together and piques the listener's curiosity with its unevenness.

"The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the very first time." - Friedrich Nietzsche

On his new EP Kok, occasional Röyksopp collaborator, Bjørn Torske relies on our abilities to remember, rather than forget, as the spur to engagement with and enjoyment of his music.
Concerned, amongst other things, with aural and spacial effects, the record is born of experimentation with different instruments, objects, and their sonic footprints within different acoustic spaces. Merging a lo-fi folk aesthetic with elements of outsider experimentation this is an interesting progression from his last release of 2007, Feil Knapp.
Whether through voice, instruments, or electronically-produced sounds, these emissions are deployed and recorded in various spaces to form an inspirational trigger in the creative process. Through this process of what is known as "worldizing", Torske seeks to escape the straitjacket of reverb plug-ins whose room emulations and mathematical logarithms are often predictable.

There are a number of interesting interactions at play in our unconscious harvesting of real world sounds, and it is these that the accomplished "worldizer" can draw upon. There is, for example, the immediate process known as echoic memory, first coined by Ulric Neisser in 1967. One of the sensory memory registers, echoic memory is a process by which sounds are perceived and held in what is known as a "holding tank", so that the stimuli can reach both ears before processing by the brain begins. This process is, in itself, short-lived. There has, however, been much work done on longer term effects, as in R.M. Schafer's "Sound, Romance and Nostalgia", which focuses on how each of us builds up a framework of remembered sound preferences that, once learned, provoke nostalgic reactions in later years. The basic premise of this work is that, as new sounds are encountered throughout life, tensions are created that engender a nostalgic desire for older sounds.
Our brains are predisposed to the visual, or what is known as iconic memory; however, the potency of the aural is such that an encounter with a particular sound can evoke a powerful conditioned response. In her piece "Movement, Memory & The Studies In Soundscape Studies", Jennifer Schine explores the "hearing-point memory", or, more expressly, how both the emotional state of the listener and its interaction with the memory are complicit in the subsequent recollection. Each memory, when re-experienced, is a product of a layering of different interfacing elements and, in this way, is constantly transitional.
It is, perhaps, this subtly fugitive but ever-changing quality that Torske seeks to capture on this EP. Through his use of "worldizing", and a process which involves editing and overdubbing these recordings, he seeks to use the chaos of real acoustics interactions to stimulate and drive forward the creative process and trigger reactions in the listener.
As an opening track, "Emmaus (Prelude)" sets the scene. It is repetitive, quirky, and short, relying on three interlacing melodies -- one of which is clumsily bashed out (all the better enhance its real world credibility) on a glockenspiel.
The use of repetition, which forms the basis of most of the tracks, is interesting in that it nods to the now firmly entrenched vogue for digital loops, and in doing so adds a further humorous edge to this music. "Assistenten", the second track on the EP, builds in this way, with a repeated guitar part, whilst introducing comic tortured voices that are reminiscent of that Dada-esque vocal ramblings on Gong's Camembert Electrique. Fluffed instrumentation also, once again, assumes its authenticating and contradictory role.
In the world of outsider music few instruments speak of backwoods oddness more than the banjo. Before Mumford and Sons made the acoustic and homespun fashionable again, banjos, at one time perhaps the most uncool of instruments, represented the quintessence of the strange. It is to this legacy that Torske looks in the track "Setter". Here a sinister interplay occurs between several parts, all twanged in unison on the evocative membrane enhance percussive sound of this simple stringed instrument. Close clicking bayou rhythms join the refrain along with a shambling distant female chorus that has echoes of Doctor John's excellent Gris-Gris album.
"Totem Expose" is more out and out experimentation, formed of phased and manipulated electronic sounds, and this journey into abstraction is completed in the final track "Nestor", which seems to owe much to the early electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire's tape experiments.
As a document, Kok, appears in some ways to be a personal survey of the origins and outcomes of experimental sound recording and electronic music. Its analogue atmospheres of real world recordings is effective, and the resultant EP is an interesting listen which, whilst not startling, is well worth attention.
The use of instruments and recordings, played and then re-recorded in different spaces to capture the musicality and effects of those acoustic environments, adds a necessary fillip. Whilst never dominating the foreground as an overarching concept, this process succeeds in holding the EP together and piques the listener's curiosity with its unevenness.
Ω

There is a somber weight inherent within the images of Italian visual artist Massimiliano Grandoni. With emotive composites of illustration and digital collage, he reveals eloquently phrased questions relating to physicality, to purpose and to categorized identity. The represented human characters appear to share a single world not only in aesthetic, but through essential symbolism and even metaphysical conflict.

Massimiliano Grandoni's geometric shapes balance composition and act as props in the relationship between being and environment. The objects, equal parts identifiable and ambiguous, facilitate discourse on the significance of matter as a physical reality in itself, as well as an imposed limit on the understanding of experience.

Your illustrations often juxtapose expressive human forms with geometric shapes. What attracted you to geometry and linear art?

I'm attracted by their bivalence. One part expresses their precision, their finitude, clarity and simplicity, the other part expresses their complexity and obscurity. A cube -- which stands itself on the space and is made of wood, of steel or of other matter -- in the first instance is matter, an accumulation of quantifiable matter. That is quantitative, just a thousandth of a millimeter out of its limit and the cube is no more; it is finished, begins at x and ends at y and z. This mathematical matrix we find from the micro- to the macro-cosmos: this is the matter’s limit, of reality.

At the same time, something that is so clear and specific encloses in itself unfathomable enigmas and mysteries. Science progresses at a speed that, until a few centuries ago, was impossible. We have available more and more new technologies that analyze, measure, catalog phenomena and explain laws. But in fact, they accumulate question after question, until a new truth is acquired, new scenarios are opened, and they bring new questions. The more we know, the more we have to know, and yet all can be explained with a simple cube that goes from x to y and z, but this simple cube brings with it unfathomable enigmas. Maybe they should be dealt with other instruments, with other knowledge and sensitivity.

Science approaches phenomena, trying to unravel the why of things, but it is in front of the how of things: how do they work? The question of why is the ultimate question and the answer can be only philosophical, because it is the question itself that is philosophical, metaphysical. Ultimately this is what fascinates me in geometric forms, this intrinsic paradox that is a challenge to the rationality of whole, which is a vertigo. When I meditate on this, I feel a little like the characters of my works: boxed, in a cage.

In what ways do you believe your geometric shapes can help express emotion? Are there certain shapes that express specific emotions?

In my work, I don't worry so much about emotions associated with specific forms. They aren't necessarily able to convey that message, even if this is well-known and is in fact a potential of its forms and, ultimately, we can say that it is their end. Rather, I investigate on their simple existence, an existence that conveys the mystery that is matter.

Within a universe populated by objects, Grandoni’s characters are confronted by their materialism. The immanence of objectification is perverse, given that Grandoni's figures rarely encounter another human form within the same composition, with the exceptions of the dramatic Ossessione series and Scenic Mystery. Despite their predominantly solitary portrayal, none of the figures expressed by Grandoni convey an indulgence in their accompanying substances. More often, the pervading impression is that of accidental encounter. This engages with qualities of predetermination, where purpose becomes manifest in seemingly random forms.

Given that the arrangements of geometric shapes in your images appear very purposeful, what kind of symbolism lies behind the shapes that are found in the worlds of your characters? Is there significance to their placement in your compositions?

What I'm trying to get through the composition and its elements is just a cage. Possibly the most rigid geometric structure of the composition serves me to get precisely the rational aspect of reality that I mentioned above. To show the real as so rigid means to reveal it in its simple existence. A plus of the real, it's as if things, objects and shapes scream their existence; a scream that carries its own enigma and it becomes impossible not to feel.

Would you say there is a unifying theme or struggle that express in your artwork, through your characters?

The conflict that my characters experience is of not finding the reality satisfactory -- they suffer it, they flee it. The reality, with its bounds and its sickly certainty to exist, disgusts, bores, but at the same time is a source for extreme meditations. My characters, who are more or less aware of the things' mystery and the universal laws, are placed in front of them suffering it. They analyze, contemplate; they know to be objects between objects, things among things, matter among other matter, but with the fundamental difference of being able to watch inside themselves.

The human being is one who takes consciousness to exist, and can only feel to be a portion of infinity in a finite body, subjected, as all, to rigid and impassable laws. This is the condition of the human being, his dramatic conflict -- being one single. Not in the sense of being unique, but in the sense of being one, a unit given birth to by the primordial and thrown into the flow of existence; an experiment as free as all that aims secretly to reconcile with the absolute… Ultimately we return to the old "to be or not to be". Never other words were more revealing of the human condition, and to be, in the final analysis, is to act. To be here and now it means this: living, evolving and being consumed, to be left in flow, and to die.

Massimiliano Grandoni's synthesis of illustration and digital collage is permeated with implication throughout its process, just as much as in its results. Such collaboration of mediums enables an organic emptiness through a vocabulary of imagination. The natural cohesion makes each composition seem fated, in spite of the initial separateness. Does this reflect a physical law within the universe containing Grandoni’s characters? Was fragmentation a transitory state that deliberately anticipated the assemblage of the whole?

A few of your works have a collage quality: what is your process of developing narrative from the fragments you find or create?

I believe that my work can be defined as digital collages. They possess the form and the creative process which consists in grasping, stealing, or rather in borrowing elements from the image's culture, to give them a new meaning, to drop them into new contexts, to manipulate them. Other elements, however, are created from nothing, for lack of satisfactory forms for me.

So let's say that the result is a mix of already existing borrowed forms and elements created by me, which are drawn or photographed, and forms born purely from the graphic software. All this under the sign of an economy of means and resources, and an eye to the already done. Today the culture of the image is overbearingly present; we have available an infinite library that grows exponentially. Every day new creations come to light, new forms are born out, something is interesting, and many more are obscene. A lot of rubbish emerges forcefully demanding attention but often, and luckily, I add, it is launched in the constant stream of images that don't take away and don't add any value. They fall pitifully, they perish and die of their ephemeral substance. Nothing absolute overlooks and persists.

An artist worthy of this adjective can't reckon with this aspect of creation. We should get used to the silence, to the white page. We should assimilate [Stephane] Mallarmé's lesson that, in this contemporary world, is even more valid. I don't mean that my work is more necessary than others; I just say that this concept is present in me. It influences my creative act which runs away from this addition of an unnecessary, from this addition of ugly to ugly, superfluous to superfluous... and I think that this is the reason for my limited production.

Massimiliano Grandoni's Top Three

We may consider the two works "seeming act" (top and middle) and "melancholia" (bottom). I arrived at this pictures reflecting on what it means to act, what they want to mean words like to want or to desire, and the slavery that they generate. As I said, to act is the definitive push to life, and it acts precisely in relation to an end, to a desired purpose. Then the wanting, the willing, are the impetus for action and this incentive in humans, but more generally in nature -- is omniscient.

Often this is revealed to us in an unconscious and automatic way. I mean that, animated by craving of desire, from this "voluntas", we often act like automatons, and the mere fact of desiring and to act puts us in the condition of beings unfinished, in constant search of what we believe missing.

But in fact I wanted to understand how and if we can get out of this stage. Then the characters who live in those rooms will refrain from the flow of action and from will for choice. Here then, the reality shows itself senseless, devoid of any utility and purpose, an eternal enigma to decipher, where matter, familiar and unusual at the same time, expresses itself in simple and often archaic forms. Showing a failure to use and remembering our limits of all that exists, what do the things that exist show themselves for? Perhaps for being codified precisely, and transformed from raw matter to something else in an alchemical game that expresses all the metaphysical of the real.

There is a somber weight inherent within the images of Italian visual artist Massimiliano Grandoni. With emotive composites of illustration and digital collage, he reveals eloquently phrased questions relating to physicality, to purpose and to categorized identity. The represented human characters appear to share a single world not only in aesthetic, but through essential symbolism and even metaphysical conflict.

Massimiliano Grandoni's geometric shapes balance composition and act as props in the relationship between being and environment. The objects, equal parts identifiable and ambiguous, facilitate discourse on the significance of matter as a physical reality in itself, as well as an imposed limit on the understanding of experience.

Your illustrations often juxtapose expressive human forms with geometric shapes. What attracted you to geometry and linear art?
I'm attracted by their bivalence. One part expresses their precision, their finitude, clarity and simplicity, the other part expresses their complexity and obscurity. A cube -- which stands itself on the space and is made of wood, of steel or of other matter -- in the first instance is matter, an accumulation of quantifiable matter. That is quantitative, just a thousandth of a millimeter out of its limit and the cube is no more; it is finished, begins at x and ends at y and z. This mathematical matrix we find from the micro- to the macro-cosmos: this is the matter’s limit, of reality.
At the same time, something that is so clear and specific encloses in itself unfathomable enigmas and mysteries. Science progresses at a speed that, until a few centuries ago, was impossible. We have available more and more new technologies that analyze, measure, catalog phenomena and explain laws. But in fact, they accumulate question after question, until a new truth is acquired, new scenarios are opened, and they bring new questions. The more we know, the more we have to know, and yet all can be explained with a simple cube that goes from x to y and z, but this simple cube brings with it unfathomable enigmas. Maybe they should be dealt with other instruments, with other knowledge and sensitivity.
Science approaches phenomena, trying to unravel the why of things, but it is in front of the how of things: how do they work? The question of why is the ultimate question and the answer can be only philosophical, because it is the question itself that is philosophical, metaphysical. Ultimately this is what fascinates me in geometric forms, this intrinsic paradox that is a challenge to the rationality of whole, which is a vertigo. When I meditate on this, I feel a little like the characters of my works: boxed, in a cage.
In what ways do you believe your geometric shapes can help express emotion? Are there certain shapes that express specific emotions?
In my work, I don't worry so much about emotions associated with specific forms. They aren't necessarily able to convey that message, even if this is well-known and is in fact a potential of its forms and, ultimately, we can say that it is their end. Rather, I investigate on their simple existence, an existence that conveys the mystery that is matter.

Within a universe populated by objects, Grandoni’s characters are confronted by their materialism. The immanence of objectification is perverse, given that Grandoni's figures rarely encounter another human form within the same composition, with the exceptions of the dramatic Ossessione series and Scenic Mystery. Despite their predominantly solitary portrayal, none of the figures expressed by Grandoni convey an indulgence in their accompanying substances. More often, the pervading impression is that of accidental encounter. This engages with qualities of predetermination, where purpose becomes manifest in seemingly random forms.

Given that the arrangements of geometric shapes in your images appear very purposeful, what kind of symbolism lies behind the shapes that are found in the worlds of your characters? Is there significance to their placement in your compositions?
What I'm trying to get through the composition and its elements is just a cage. Possibly the most rigid geometric structure of the composition serves me to get precisely the rational aspect of reality that I mentioned above. To show the real as so rigid means to reveal it in its simple existence. A plus of the real, it's as if things, objects and shapes scream their existence; a scream that carries its own enigma and it becomes impossible not to feel.
Would you say there is a unifying theme or struggle that express in your artwork, through your characters?
The conflict that my characters experience is of not finding the reality satisfactory -- they suffer it, they flee it. The reality, with its bounds and its sickly certainty to exist, disgusts, bores, but at the same time is a source for extreme meditations. My characters, who are more or less aware of the things' mystery and the universal laws, are placed in front of them suffering it. They analyze, contemplate; they know to be objects between objects, things among things, matter among other matter, but with the fundamental difference of being able to watch inside themselves.
The human being is one who takes consciousness to exist, and can only feel to be a portion of infinity in a finite body, subjected, as all, to rigid and impassable laws. This is the condition of the human being, his dramatic conflict -- being one single. Not in the sense of being unique, but in the sense of being one, a unit given birth to by the primordial and thrown into the flow of existence; an experiment as free as all that aims secretly to reconcile with the absolute… Ultimately we return to the old "to be or not to be". Never other words were more revealing of the human condition, and to be, in the final analysis, is to act. To be here and now it means this: living, evolving and being consumed, to be left in flow, and to die.

Massimiliano Grandoni's synthesis of illustration and digital collage is permeated with implication throughout its process, just as much as in its results. Such collaboration of mediums enables an organic emptiness through a vocabulary of imagination. The natural cohesion makes each composition seem fated, in spite of the initial separateness. Does this reflect a physical law within the universe containing Grandoni’s characters? Was fragmentation a transitory state that deliberately anticipated the assemblage of the whole?

A few of your works have a collage quality: what is your process of developing narrative from the fragments you find or create?
I believe that my work can be defined as digital collages. They possess the form and the creative process which consists in grasping, stealing, or rather in borrowing elements from the image's culture, to give them a new meaning, to drop them into new contexts, to manipulate them. Other elements, however, are created from nothing, for lack of satisfactory forms for me.
So let's say that the result is a mix of already existing borrowed forms and elements created by me, which are drawn or photographed, and forms born purely from the graphic software. All this under the sign of an economy of means and resources, and an eye to the already done. Today the culture of the image is overbearingly present; we have available an infinite library that grows exponentially. Every day new creations come to light, new forms are born out, something is interesting, and many more are obscene. A lot of rubbish emerges forcefully demanding attention but often, and luckily, I add, it is launched in the constant stream of images that don't take away and don't add any value. They fall pitifully, they perish and die of their ephemeral substance. Nothing absolute overlooks and persists.
An artist worthy of this adjective can't reckon with this aspect of creation. We should get used to the silence, to the white page. We should assimilate [Stephane] Mallarmé's lesson that, in this contemporary world, is even more valid. I don't mean that my work is more necessary than others; I just say that this concept is present in me. It influences my creative act which runs away from this addition of an unnecessary, from this addition of ugly to ugly, superfluous to superfluous... and I think that this is the reason for my limited production.

Massimiliano Grandoni's Top Three

We may consider the two works "seeming act" (top and middle) and "melancholia" (bottom). I arrived at this pictures reflecting on what it means to act, what they want to mean words like to want or to desire, and the slavery that they generate. As I said, to act is the definitive push to life, and it acts precisely in relation to an end, to a desired purpose. Then the wanting, the willing, are the impetus for action and this incentive in humans, but more generally in nature -- is omniscient.

Often this is revealed to us in an unconscious and automatic way. I mean that, animated by craving of desire, from this "voluntas", we often act like automatons, and the mere fact of desiring and to act puts us in the condition of beings unfinished, in constant search of what we believe missing.
But in fact I wanted to understand how and if we can get out of this stage. Then the characters who live in those rooms will refrain from the flow of action and from will for choice. Here then, the reality shows itself senseless, devoid of any utility and purpose, an eternal enigma to decipher, where matter, familiar and unusual at the same time, expresses itself in simple and often archaic forms. Showing a failure to use and remembering our limits of all that exists, what do the things that exist show themselves for? Perhaps for being codified precisely, and transformed from raw matter to something else in an alchemical game that expresses all the metaphysical of the real.
- Massimiliano Grandoni
Ω

While the decommissioning of NASA's space program seems to be an outward indicator of a global lack of interest in the great beyond, one can always look to the arts to realize that the human fascination in space and sci-fi are as strong as they've ever been, if not stronger. This is perhaps most obvious in film: Star Wars and Star Trek are constantly enjoying modern revisions; Gravity recently portrayed space in remarkable new ways; 2001: Space Odyssey is still eternally being cited as influential; the list goes on.

In the music world, space's ability to stir the imagination manifests in less obvious ways. Lyrics and band names may pay homage to the stars above, but it is often the wordless feeling between dramatic instrumental music and the final frontier that leads to the most recognizable connection.

A recent collaboration between New York's Infinity Shred and director Dean Marcial of the Brooklyn studio Calavera builds off of their mutual interest in the work of Carl Sagan and space, in general. Marcial's 2010 short film, Darkmatter, comprises the grainy first portion of the video and provides its foundation. As the narrative continues, the film's astronauts pass through multiple dimensions, and Marcial uses increasing fidelity and morphing aspect ratios to subtly drive this concept home.

The effect of pairing instrumental spaciness with literal images of spaces brings the entire audio-visual experience up to new heights. As the release of films like Gravity lead the world to question whether a film might save NASA, you have to wonder what our fascination will lead us to; for media, that aggregate of collective imaginations, seems to prove that we will never fail to be stirred by space's mysteries.

In this dual interview between Infinity Shred's synth master Damon Hardjowirogo and director Dean Marcial, the two sound off on the process behind this music video, the overarching themes, and the scale of it all.

Infinity Shred - "Mapper" Music Video

How did the collaboration between musician and director first come to form, and how much of an exchange of ideas was there?

Dean Marcial:
I knew Damon through our mutual friend and awesome production designer Esther Kim. We'd known each other for a couple of years and she suggested that we work together, as we were both into space and extradimensional things.

The band gave me a lot of support all throughout pre-production and post, from the initial concept to planning out the shots; we even sat down to edit together when I was hitting walls. I think because of this closeness between the musicians and myself, we were able to create a piece where the music melded into the images and vice versa.

Damon Hardjowirogo:
Fun fact: I met Esther on Xanga

What are the themes and concepts driving this video? Was it inspired at all by Ray Bradbury's "Kaleidoscope", and if so, how?

Dean Marcial:
I actually tried to adapt Kaleidoscope into a short film and had called the publisher for the rights after writing the script, but they told me Warner Bros. had an option on it, and it would cost me a bazillion dollars anyway. So I did the next best thing and changed the names, cut it down to two characters, threw in a bit about a dark matter cluster, and hoped that the studio and/or the publisher wouldn't sue me.

My original thematic pitch for this video was, "What if 2001 was made by a Russian B-movie crew and beat Kubrick to the punch by a couple of years?". We wanted to explore those large-canvas themes of being stuck and unstuck in space and time in a different, decidedly lo-fi way.

The first half comes from "Darkmatter", a 2010 short film. How was it decided that this music video would be an extension of that? Are there particular qualities or themes shared between the song and the short film(s) that made this particularly attractive, as opposed to starting over completely?

Dean Marcial:
I am an editor by trade, and "Darkmatter" was my junior thesis film at my university. I always really liked the film but I never really did anything with it, so in meeting with the band and not having a lot of money, I offered up re-cutting the movie, preserving some of the really good bits of dialogue, and doing it in time with the song. It wasn't starting over as much as it was digging deeper, and it became more and more apparent to me that this collaboration was the intended final product.

What I find incredible about their music is that it captured so many things in notes that I was trying so hard to pursue through images and dialogue. It's at once haunting and reassuring, it transports you to those rare heights of thought that gets your head wrapped up around the significance of being stardust.

Can you tell me a little bit about the Russian typography used throughout this film, primarily in the graphical intro credits and chapter headings? They're totally amazing.

Dean Marcial:
All of those titles were designed by our good friend Erik Carter, who is an incredible and extremely talented graphic designer. He also designed the rear-projection backgrounds you see in the film as well as the special effects.

The main inspiration for them were the trailer titles for a movie called Battle Beyond the Sun, which was originally a heady Soviet science-fiction film about astronauts who travel to Mars that was acquired by Roger Corman in the late 1960s, heavily re-cut, dubbed, and partially re-shot to make a fairly incoherent but aesthetically beautiful action B-movie by none other than a very young Francis Ford Coppola.

Though we've received a few complaints about the titles and subtitles not being completely accurate, I actually feel like this is fulfilling some sort of revenge fantasy for the Russians, taking an American sci-fi action film, and re-editing and subtitling different dialogue to make it more like one of those depressing Russian space movies about existentialism.

I am assuming that the new portion of the footage kicks in at about halfway as the music reaches particular heights; is this correct? It also seems to have less grain, more fidelity, and more graphical elements. Was there a debate over the video quality between the old and the new? Was the reason for the shift technical or philosophical?

Dean Marcial:
Originally we were going to try to match the video quality, but in the end, we both found it best to have the footage look better and better as the film goes along. That's actually where the idea of changing aspect ratios comes from -- starting out in 1.33 pillarboxed, then moving onto 1.66, 1.78, 1.85, and eventually 2.35 and winding up at 2.55, which is wider than Cinemascope. We never quite got it to Hype Williams/Ben-Hur's 3:1, but that might've been going overboard anyway.

Damon Hardjowirogo:
Conceptually we all also became attached to the idea of the fidelity of the video increasing steadily throughout the piece.

What is your favorite fact, piece of media, or idea related to space?

Dean Marcial:
I always really loved Carl Sagan's idea of the pale blue dot, and the story behind it. When the Voyager One was reaching the edge of our solar system, Sagan had convinced NASA to take one last picture of Earth before it powered down for its long journey into the abyss, not for any scientific purpose, [but] just to get a sense of perspective about our place in the cosmos. It's something that really stayed with me, and I go back to that idea when I need some much needed perspective. A lot of drama and anxiety seems very petty when you put it that way.

Damon Hardjowirogo:
Space has fascinated me since I was very young. The best I can commit to any one thing about space being my favorite would be that it represents the unknown and our natural human desire to explore and make sense of the universe.

While the decommissioning of NASA's space program seems to be an outward indicator of a global lack of interest in the great beyond, one can always look to the arts to realize that the human fascination in space and sci-fi are as strong as they've ever been, if not stronger. This is perhaps most obvious in film: Star Wars and Star Trek are constantly enjoying modern revisions; Gravity recently portrayed space in remarkable new ways; 2001: Space Odyssey is still eternally being cited as influential; the list goes on.
In the music world, space's ability to stir the imagination manifests in less obvious ways. Lyrics and band names may pay homage to the stars above, but it is often the wordless feeling between dramatic instrumental music and the final frontier that leads to the most recognizable connection.
A recent collaboration between New York's Infinity Shred and director Dean Marcial of the Brooklyn studio Calavera builds off of their mutual interest in the work of Carl Sagan and space, in general. Marcial's 2010 short film, Darkmatter, comprises the grainy first portion of the video and provides its foundation. As the narrative continues, the film's astronauts pass through multiple dimensions, and Marcial uses increasing fidelity and morphing aspect ratios to subtly drive this concept home.
The effect of pairing instrumental spaciness with literal images of spaces brings the entire audio-visual experience up to new heights. As the release of films like Gravity lead the world to question whether a film might save NASA, you have to wonder what our fascination will lead us to; for media, that aggregate of collective imaginations, seems to prove that we will never fail to be stirred by space's mysteries.
In this dual interview between Infinity Shred's synth master Damon Hardjowirogo and director Dean Marcial, the two sound off on the process behind this music video, the overarching themes, and the scale of it all.

Infinity Shred - "Mapper" Music Video

How did the collaboration between musician and director first come to form, and how much of an exchange of ideas was there?

Dean Marcial:
I knew Damon through our mutual friend and awesome production designer Esther Kim. We'd known each other for a couple of years and she suggested that we work together, as we were both into space and extradimensional things.
The band gave me a lot of support all throughout pre-production and post, from the initial concept to planning out the shots; we even sat down to edit together when I was hitting walls. I think because of this closeness between the musicians and myself, we were able to create a piece where the music melded into the images and vice versa.

Damon Hardjowirogo:
Fun fact: I met Esther on Xanga

What are the themes and concepts driving this video? Was it inspired at all by Ray Bradbury's "Kaleidoscope", and if so, how?

Dean Marcial:
I actually tried to adapt Kaleidoscope into a short film and had called the publisher for the rights after writing the script, but they told me Warner Bros. had an option on it, and it would cost me a bazillion dollars anyway. So I did the next best thing and changed the names, cut it down to two characters, threw in a bit about a dark matter cluster, and hoped that the studio and/or the publisher wouldn't sue me.
My original thematic pitch for this video was, "What if 2001 was made by a Russian B-movie crew and beat Kubrick to the punch by a couple of years?". We wanted to explore those large-canvas themes of being stuck and unstuck in space and time in a different, decidedly lo-fi way.

The first half comes from "Darkmatter", a 2010 short film. How was it decided that this music video would be an extension of that? Are there particular qualities or themes shared between the song and the short film(s) that made this particularly attractive, as opposed to starting over completely?

Dean Marcial:
I am an editor by trade, and "Darkmatter" was my junior thesis film at my university. I always really liked the film but I never really did anything with it, so in meeting with the band and not having a lot of money, I offered up re-cutting the movie, preserving some of the really good bits of dialogue, and doing it in time with the song. It wasn't starting over as much as it was digging deeper, and it became more and more apparent to me that this collaboration was the intended final product.
What I find incredible about their music is that it captured so many things in notes that I was trying so hard to pursue through images and dialogue. It's at once haunting and reassuring, it transports you to those rare heights of thought that gets your head wrapped up around the significance of being stardust.

Can you tell me a little bit about the Russian typography used throughout this film, primarily in the graphical intro credits and chapter headings? They're totally amazing.

Dean Marcial:
All of those titles were designed by our good friend Erik Carter, who is an incredible and extremely talented graphic designer. He also designed the rear-projection backgrounds you see in the film as well as the special effects.
The main inspiration for them were the trailer titles for a movie called Battle Beyond the Sun, which was originally a heady Soviet science-fiction film about astronauts who travel to Mars that was acquired by Roger Corman in the late 1960s, heavily re-cut, dubbed, and partially re-shot to make a fairly incoherent but aesthetically beautiful action B-movie by none other than a very young Francis Ford Coppola.
Though we've received a few complaints about the titles and subtitles not being completely accurate, I actually feel like this is fulfilling some sort of revenge fantasy for the Russians, taking an American sci-fi action film, and re-editing and subtitling different dialogue to make it more like one of those depressing Russian space movies about existentialism.

I am assuming that the new portion of the footage kicks in at about halfway as the music reaches particular heights; is this correct? It also seems to have less grain, more fidelity, and more graphical elements. Was there a debate over the video quality between the old and the new? Was the reason for the shift technical or philosophical?

Dean Marcial:
Originally we were going to try to match the video quality, but in the end, we both found it best to have the footage look better and better as the film goes along. That's actually where the idea of changing aspect ratios comes from -- starting out in 1.33 pillarboxed, then moving onto 1.66, 1.78, 1.85, and eventually 2.35 and winding up at 2.55, which is wider than Cinemascope. We never quite got it to Hype Williams/Ben-Hur's 3:1, but that might've been going overboard anyway.

Damon Hardjowirogo:
Conceptually we all also became attached to the idea of the fidelity of the video increasing steadily throughout the piece.

What is your favorite fact, piece of media, or idea related to space?

Dean Marcial:
I always really loved Carl Sagan's idea of the pale blue dot, and the story behind it. When the Voyager One was reaching the edge of our solar system, Sagan had convinced NASA to take one last picture of Earth before it powered down for its long journey into the abyss, not for any scientific purpose, [but] just to get a sense of perspective about our place in the cosmos. It's something that really stayed with me, and I go back to that idea when I need some much needed perspective. A lot of drama and anxiety seems very petty when you put it that way.

Damon Hardjowirogo:
Space has fascinated me since I was very young. The best I can commit to any one thing about space being my favorite would be that it represents the unknown and our natural human desire to explore and make sense of the universe.

To express questions of context, displacement and fragmented identity, what better medium could there be than the nature of assemblage in collage? Image artifacts are laid bare while hypothetical situations construct parallel universes. The familiar falls in rhythm with the bizarre. Framed in conscious composition, such vivid and dreamlike landscapes are manipulated at the hands of North Carolina-based collage artist Bryan Olson.

Olson interprets the remains of vintage magazines and other paper paraphernalia to illustrate a recreated mythology. Exaggerated idols can be found in the most unassuming of inanimate objects, as in the towering pink liquids of Delicious Land; humans are translated into curious anomalies within environments never to be encountered. Even the simplest geometric shapes are given new context. The glory that saturates symbolism in his ordered universe recalls, with little effort, the naivety of space exploration and human pursuit of knowledge. Every image by Olson is characterized by the familiar presence of the Earth or objects of earthly origin, yet deliberate fragmentation makes them feel extraterrestrial. In further emphasis to this refrain, overt images of astronomy intensify Olson's dialogues with people, places and structures. Yet, by maintaining a rooted sense of natural flow within his collage, Bryan Olson engages with the absurdity of human behavior and the scope of the massive cosmic entities without, on the most part, seeming psychedelic.

Positioning archaeological and behavioural semblances of our history against vast spaces, be they the cosmos or limestone canyons, Olson's power lies in his surrealistic control of size. Despite the human body visualized in tandem with geological elements that are engorged out of their natural proportions or starkly placed against geometric forms, these human figures never feel out of place. They comfortably inhabit the environments within Bryan Olson's compositions, fulfilling their granted space and even seeming to dilute the enormity of their accompanying entities. People of Titan (below) does this exceptionally well, using the comic combination of beach-goers against the colossus of Saturn and its moon Titan, responding to theories of discovering life on Titan and our expectations of what constitutes life in our principles.

As a continuation of this narrative, Bryan Olson demonstrates the perceived massivity of human history by repositioning perspective in Post Oscillation (above) to exalt an artifact -- a human jaw bone, not even a complete skull -- extended in pointed demonstration. Divested from any realistic context and even more compelling due to the grip of the disembodied, white, and masculine hand, this fractured relic still lessens the grandeur of the encompassing geology that we know to be formidable.

Highlight Questions

Given that your arrangements use the medium of collage as a way to express surreal and science-fiction influences, in what ways do you explore dreams or the subconscious in your work?

In most cases, our dreams are bizarre scenes or half-thoughts. They are incomplete storylines that zip off into different directions. My creative process starts like a dream; I never really know what I'm going for or what pieces will be used to complete the collage. It's a very subconscious adventure at first, but then I wake up and reality sets in. The reality is making sure I glue everything down correctly.

A few of your collages feature crowds of people, and a few individuals, set against the backdrop of the cosmos. What kind of meaning do you find, or did you intend, in placing humans against space?

We as a human race are always searching for an answer to the unknown. We have broken down impossible barriers in the fields of science, technology and biology, yet we are still not satisfied. The universe contradicts us in so many ways. We know so little about it and may never truly understand it. It's a fascinating thing to go outside on a starry night, look up, and ask yourself: "what is out there? How did I get here?"

When humans are not present within the collage of Bryan Olson, the prominent entities are usually modernist architectural structures. They do not confess to serve any purpose beyond imposing a presence onto their environments -- existence only for its own sake. The shapes are familiar and reflect elements of humanity, making each of these ultrastructures, as Olson refers to them, slices of consciousness against the vacuum of space. Architecture serves as character, while Olson claims to "imagine how nature sees man". True enough, the vigilant eye of ultrastructures #8 (above) reminds of the inability to divest judgement from the human reality.

Highlight Questions

Some of your images explore strong geometric shapes: they command a presence in a landscape like statues or they seem to represent suspended structures. What role does "structure" and "place" hold in your images?

I try to incorporate architecture into my work as much as possible, whether it's an actual building or monolithic design. I am inspired by Mies Van Der Rohe's approach, using raw materials such as glass, steel and concrete to exhibit a strong structural presence through simplicity. I am also inspired by the abandoned Spomenik monuments of Yugoslavia. They have a strange polarizing presence, and I try to portray that feeling in my work.

Given that the arrangements of geometric shapes in your images appear very purposeful, what kind of symbolism lies behind the shapes you chose? Is there significance to their placement in your compositions?

Most of my collages display landscapes, natural subjects and man made subjects together in the same setting. I try to imagine how nature sees man. If nature had human emotion, how would it perceive us? What would we look like? What does the pain of our ignorance and over consumption feel like? The piece ultrastructures #8 is an example of that idea.

Geology and geographic themes are very dominant in your series: what role do places have in your composition, and is there an overarching relationship with the Earth or environment that you hope to convey?

Pulling from the previous answer to the question of symbolism, the overarching relationship is that of man and nature. I, however, am not specific in my choices of geographical places for most of the images I choose are from a vast culmination of source material and are selected by visual appeal.

Adapting Fields (below) features the golden spiral. How did you discover this symbol and what significance do you attribute to it, in both the image and on a personal level?

I think I stumbled upon the "golden spiral" when browsing through in old physics book for images to use for a collage. I was very inspired by the fact that the spiral shows up in nature all of the time. From a nautilus shell to distant galaxies, this spiral appears. It is almost like the spiral defines our existence. We are born, we live our lives and then we die. We continue to spiral, forever. Something magical is definitely happening there.

Bryan Olson's Top Three

Talk Sheep

"This piece was dedicated to a fellow collage artist (Jesse Treece) after a brief discussion about using sheep in our collages. The image portrays passersby stopping to gaze at a herd of sheep below. In the background, a mechanical wall of buttons and dials with an eye in the middle gazes upon the passersby. It's a portrayal of how politicians have overall say and control over the government and the people. From the eye of the machine, we are just sheep."

Fragility

"I was inspired to make this piece after reading an astronaut's take of seeing earth from space and how fragile it looked. He described it as being 'a fragile oasis on the backdrop of infinity'."

"5th Density"

"My brother and I have had lengthy discussions about the afterlife and densities. We can get into some interesting topics regarding extraterrestrials as well. This piece was inspired by those conversations."

To express questions of context, displacement and fragmented identity, what better medium could there be than the nature of assemblage in collage? Image artifacts are laid bare while hypothetical situations construct parallel universes. The familiar falls in rhythm with the bizarre. Framed in conscious composition, such vivid and dreamlike landscapes are manipulated at the hands of North Carolina-based collage artist Bryan Olson.
Olson interprets the remains of vintage magazines and other paper paraphernalia to illustrate a recreated mythology. Exaggerated idols can be found in the most unassuming of inanimate objects, as in the towering pink liquids of Delicious Land; humans are translated into curious anomalies within environments never to be encountered. Even the simplest geometric shapes are given new context. The glory that saturates symbolism in his ordered universe recalls, with little effort, the naivety of space exploration and human pursuit of knowledge. Every image by Olson is characterized by the familiar presence of the Earth or objects of earthly origin, yet deliberate fragmentation makes them feel extraterrestrial. In further emphasis to this refrain, overt images of astronomy intensify Olson's dialogues with people, places and structures. Yet, by maintaining a rooted sense of natural flow within his collage, Bryan Olson engages with the absurdity of human behavior and the scope of the massive cosmic entities without, on the most part, seeming psychedelic.

Positioning archaeological and behavioural semblances of our history against vast spaces, be they the cosmos or limestone canyons, Olson's power lies in his surrealistic control of size. Despite the human body visualized in tandem with geological elements that are engorged out of their natural proportions or starkly placed against geometric forms, these human figures never feel out of place. They comfortably inhabit the environments within Bryan Olson's compositions, fulfilling their granted space and even seeming to dilute the enormity of their accompanying entities. People of Titan (below) does this exceptionally well, using the comic combination of beach-goers against the colossus of Saturn and its moon Titan, responding to theories of discovering life on Titan and our expectations of what constitutes life in our principles.

As a continuation of this narrative, Bryan Olson demonstrates the perceived massivity of human history by repositioning perspective in Post Oscillation (above) to exalt an artifact -- a human jaw bone, not even a complete skull -- extended in pointed demonstration. Divested from any realistic context and even more compelling due to the grip of the disembodied, white, and masculine hand, this fractured relic still lessens the grandeur of the encompassing geology that we know to be formidable.

Highlight Questions

Given that your arrangements use the medium of collage as a way to express surreal and science-fiction influences, in what ways do you explore dreams or the subconscious in your work?
In most cases, our dreams are bizarre scenes or half-thoughts. They are incomplete storylines that zip off into different directions. My creative process starts like a dream; I never really know what I'm going for or what pieces will be used to complete the collage. It's a very subconscious adventure at first, but then I wake up and reality sets in. The reality is making sure I glue everything down correctly.
A few of your collages feature crowds of people, and a few individuals, set against the backdrop of the cosmos. What kind of meaning do you find, or did you intend, in placing humans against space?
We as a human race are always searching for an answer to the unknown. We have broken down impossible barriers in the fields of science, technology and biology, yet we are still not satisfied. The universe contradicts us in so many ways. We know so little about it and may never truly understand it. It's a fascinating thing to go outside on a starry night, look up, and ask yourself: "what is out there? How did I get here?"

When humans are not present within the collage of Bryan Olson, the prominent entities are usually modernist architectural structures. They do not confess to serve any purpose beyond imposing a presence onto their environments -- existence only for its own sake. The shapes are familiar and reflect elements of humanity, making each of these ultrastructures, as Olson refers to them, slices of consciousness against the vacuum of space. Architecture serves as character, while Olson claims to "imagine how nature sees man". True enough, the vigilant eye of ultrastructures #8 (above) reminds of the inability to divest judgement from the human reality.

Highlight Questions

Some of your images explore strong geometric shapes: they command a presence in a landscape like statues or they seem to represent suspended structures. What role does "structure" and "place" hold in your images?
I try to incorporate architecture into my work as much as possible, whether it's an actual building or monolithic design. I am inspired by Mies Van Der Rohe's approach, using raw materials such as glass, steel and concrete to exhibit a strong structural presence through simplicity. I am also inspired by the abandoned Spomenik monuments of Yugoslavia. They have a strange polarizing presence, and I try to portray that feeling in my work.
Given that the arrangements of geometric shapes in your images appear very purposeful, what kind of symbolism lies behind the shapes you chose? Is there significance to their placement in your compositions?
Most of my collages display landscapes, natural subjects and man made subjects together in the same setting. I try to imagine how nature sees man. If nature had human emotion, how would it perceive us? What would we look like? What does the pain of our ignorance and over consumption feel like? The piece ultrastructures #8 is an example of that idea.
Geology and geographic themes are very dominant in your series: what role do places have in your composition, and is there an overarching relationship with the Earth or environment that you hope to convey?
Pulling from the previous answer to the question of symbolism, the overarching relationship is that of man and nature. I, however, am not specific in my choices of geographical places for most of the images I choose are from a vast culmination of source material and are selected by visual appeal.
Adapting Fields (below) features the golden spiral. How did you discover this symbol and what significance do you attribute to it, in both the image and on a personal level?
I think I stumbled upon the "golden spiral" when browsing through in old physics book for images to use for a collage. I was very inspired by the fact that the spiral shows up in nature all of the time. From a nautilus shell to distant galaxies, this spiral appears. It is almost like the spiral defines our existence. We are born, we live our lives and then we die. We continue to spiral, forever. Something magical is definitely happening there.

Bryan Olson's Top Three

Talk Sheep

"This piece was dedicated to a fellow collage artist (Jesse Treece) after a brief discussion about using sheep in our collages. The image portrays passersby stopping to gaze at a herd of sheep below. In the background, a mechanical wall of buttons and dials with an eye in the middle gazes upon the passersby. It's a portrayal of how politicians have overall say and control over the government and the people. From the eye of the machine, we are just sheep."

Fragility

"I was inspired to make this piece after reading an astronaut's take of seeing earth from space and how fragile it looked. He described it as being 'a fragile oasis on the backdrop of infinity'."

"5th Density"

"My brother and I have had lengthy discussions about the afterlife and densities. We can get into some interesting topics regarding extraterrestrials as well. This piece was inspired by those conversations."

When the American trio Dawn of Midi released their accomplished 2010 debut album, First, the world had gained another practitioner of minimalist free jazz. Two years in the making, and at a reported cost of thirty thousand dollars, Dysnomia is the follow-up to that promising debut, and builds masterfully on First, delivering an exciting blend of acute syncopation and imaginative instrumental counterpoint.

The first track, "Io", opens with resonating bass which is joined by a building rhythm produced by what might be a piano. Muted and muffled, this part works simultaneously with and against the initial deep bass, which is then underscored by the stabbing rhythm of a rich bass drum. From then on this track and those that follow build into a sparse though satisfyingly complex interaction of the three elements that comprise the classic jazz trio. The interplay of drums, bass and piano that make up Dawn of Midi is clever throughout, but in a way that never allows clarity to be lost. Hypnotic, rotating and tightly controlled, a subtle evolution of sound is the watermark that runs through this album.

"Io", "Sinope", "Atlas", "Nix", "Moon", "Ymir", "Ijiraq", "Algol", "Dysnomia": each track merges with the next to make an album that is one complete piece of music.

Dysnomia, of the album's title, is both the daughter of Eris the Greek goddess of chaos, strife and discord and a moon of the dwarf planet Eris. Indeed there is an astronomical and, by connection, a mythological theme carried through all the album's track titles. Coincidentally, for a music which often relies on the repetition of the same note and on beats scattered with hesitations, "dysnomia", or anomic aphasia, is also the name of a neurological condition affecting the memory -- a severe problem involving a failure to recall words or names.

Whatever the inspiration, this is not a music of egotistical solos, as these pieces take flight through the surprising universe of variety that Dawn of Midi conjure with their experiments in push-and-pull that is based around a limited palette of notes. Tilting and delaying beats, artfully stretching and questioning the interplay of time signatures, absorb the listener in a virtuosity of the fewest notes.

The group cites influences as diverse as Aphex Twin, The Police, Can and even queen of the games, Ms. Pac-Man. All of these elements can be heard, though perhaps only in whispers and hints. There are also echoes of Fela Kuti and afrobeat in the powerful flow of their intertwined rhythms, where diminuendo and crescendo play an important role in delivering light and shade.

Dysnomia could so easily have been a different album. Realising, after their first attempt at recording, that they had not made the quantum leap they felt they needed, they went back into the studio. Whilst the first version of the recording was more akin to their debut, using improvisation, the final cut is, as their label release describes it: "a brooding balancing act between a fascination with structure and a desire to create their own definition of dance music."

Beautifully produced by Rusty Santos, Dysnomia, perhaps reflects the stream-of-consciousness style of the album World I See, by Santos' own group, The Presents. Whatever the truth, there is clearly a positive creative dynamic at work between producer and band, that manifests itself in confident and perfectly-controlled sounds.

Bassist Aakaash Israni states:

"The spaces between the dialogues of the notes are filled by the body of the listener and they complete the circuit, leaving one option-to-dance."

This statement sheds, perhaps, an oblique light on the gestalt nature of this project, where the whole is greater than sum of its parts. In the case of Dawn of Midi the form-generating capabilities of our senses operate both with and between the sounds to produce a full and uniform whole. In a world where every gap is occupied and crammed with noise, where nothing is left to the imagination and the frenetic is preeminent, this is no easy achievement.

Sometimes the old can be used to shed light on the new and in doing so, deliver surprising results. With their instruments, traditional and steeped in classic jazz norms, Dawn of Midi have attempted to engineer their own take on dance music: to make "music to dance to, with or without shoes". In doing this, they have produced a beautiful and beguiling album: one to listen to with the lights out and with your eyes closed. Whether you leave your shoes on or not is entirely up to you.

Dawn of Midi's Dysnomia: A Track-By-Track Breakdown of its Astronomical and Mythological Implications

1. Io

Mythology
Hera is the Queen of the Gods and the goddess of women and marriage. She is also the wife and sister of Zeus. Io refers to her priestess, who Zeus seduced and then turned into a heifer as a means of protection. In order to keep watch over Io, Hera sent the one-hundred-eyed Argus Panoptes to watch over her -- but an intervention by Hermes led to Io's escape. From here, she roamed the world in her heifer form. Hera, was, however, not finished with Io and sent a gadfly to sting her repeatedly.

Astronomy
Io is the innermost moon of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter and is the fourth largest moon in the Solar System.

Painting by Casdiglione Giovanni Benedetto (1609-1663/65). Io the heifer; Zeus and Hera are seen in the background.

2. Sinope

Mythology
One of the daughters Asopus, Sinope was said to have been carried by the Greek god Apollo to the place where the city of the same name later stood. She also bore Apollo a son, named Syrus, who later became King of the Syrians.

Astronomy
Sinope is the name of an irregular satellite of Jupiter that was discovered in 1914. It did not receive its present name until 1975 and was sometimes called Hades between 1955 and 1975.

3. Atlas

Mythology
Atlas, one of a second generation of Titans and the brother of Prometheus in Greek legend, was punished by Zeus and made to carry the weight of the heavens (not the Earth as is sometimes thought) on his back. This punishment was handed down after Atlas led a rebellion against Zeus. Atlas is also said to be the god who instructed mankind in the art of astronomy.

Astronomy
Atlas is the inner moon of Saturn.

4. Nix

Mythology
Nix has a few possible interpretations. With the spelling Nyx, it refers to the Greek goddess of night who can be found at the beginning of creation. She is the mother of Thanatos, the daemon personification of death, and Hypnos, the daemon personification of sleep. Daemons, in Greek mythology, were benevolent spirits of nature rather than the malignant demons of Christianity.

Another possible reading is that of Nix (also Nixe/Nyx/Neck) of German legends. The Nix are water spirits who, although usually apparent in human form, can shape-shift. As river dwelling mermen or merwomen, they draw humans to their watery deaths.

Astronomy
Nix, taken from Greek mythology, is of one of Pluto's satellites that was discovered in 2005, along with Hydra, by the Hubble Space Telescope.

5. Moon

6. Ymir

Mythology
Ymir (pronounced ee-meer) is a primeval hermaphroditic giant and the first creature to come into being from a gaping abyss known as Ginnungagap. He is the ancestor of all jötnar (or jötunn in Old Norse), who are a mythological race living on one of the nine worlds of Norse cosmology. They are separated from Asgard, the world of the Æsir, or principal pantheon in Norse mythology, after being banished by the leading gods.

Astronomy
Ymir is a moon of Saturn that was discovered in the year 2000 and named in the year 2003.

Illustration by Lorendz Frølich; Ymir is attacked by his brothers Odin, Vili, and Vé

7. Ijiraq

Mythology
Ijiraq is a shape-shifting creature of Innuit mythology who kidnaps children and then abandons them in a hidden place. Living between two worlds, they can only be seen from the corner of the eye, in a fleeting moment, and are completely impossible to observe directly. Some Innuit believe that the Ijiraq came into being when their ancestors travelled too far north in search of game and became trapped between the world of living and the dead.

Astronomy
Ijiraq is a small irregular satellite of the planet Saturn; it was discovered in 2000 and named in 2003.

8. Algol

Mythology
Algol represents the Medusa's head with which Perseus turned Cetus to stone in Greek mythology. If Medusa was looked upon, her horrifying appearance would turn onlookers to stone.

Astronomy
In astronomical terms Algol, the Demon Star, was considered to be unlucky. The brightest star in Perseus, Algol is the prototype eclipsing binary of the type of stars known as Algol stars. An eclipsing binary is a star that appears as a single point of light when observed but is in fact two stars in close orbit around one another. The star takes its name from the Arabic word meaning "the demon's head" and is said to depict the terrifying snake-covered head of the Medusa monster.

Dawn of Midi
Dysnomia
Thirsty Ear Recordings (2013)When the American trio Dawn of Midi released their accomplished 2010 debut album, First, the world had gained another practitioner of minimalist free jazz. Two years in the making, and at a reported cost of thirty thousand dollars, Dysnomia is the follow-up to that promising debut, and builds masterfully on First, delivering an exciting blend of acute syncopation and imaginative instrumental counterpoint.

The first track, "Io", opens with resonating bass which is joined by a building rhythm produced by what might be a piano. Muted and muffled, this part works simultaneously with and against the initial deep bass, which is then underscored by the stabbing rhythm of a rich bass drum. From then on this track and those that follow build into a sparse though satisfyingly complex interaction of the three elements that comprise the classic jazz trio. The interplay of drums, bass and piano that make up Dawn of Midi is clever throughout, but in a way that never allows clarity to be lost. Hypnotic, rotating and tightly controlled, a subtle evolution of sound is the watermark that runs through this album.
"Io", "Sinope", "Atlas", "Nix", "Moon", "Ymir", "Ijiraq", "Algol", "Dysnomia": each track merges with the next to make an album that is one complete piece of music.

Dysnomia, of the album's title, is both the daughter of Eris the Greek goddess of chaos, strife and discord and a moon of the dwarf planet Eris. Indeed there is an astronomical and, by connection, a mythological theme carried through all the album's track titles. Coincidentally, for a music which often relies on the repetition of the same note and on beats scattered with hesitations, "dysnomia", or anomic aphasia, is also the name of a neurological condition affecting the memory -- a severe problem involving a failure to recall words or names.
Whatever the inspiration, this is not a music of egotistical solos, as these pieces take flight through the surprising universe of variety that Dawn of Midi conjure with their experiments in push-and-pull that is based around a limited palette of notes. Tilting and delaying beats, artfully stretching and questioning the interplay of time signatures, absorb the listener in a virtuosity of the fewest notes.
The group cites influences as diverse as Aphex Twin, The Police, Can and even queen of the games, Ms. Pac-Man. All of these elements can be heard, though perhaps only in whispers and hints. There are also echoes of Fela Kuti and afrobeat in the powerful flow of their intertwined rhythms, where diminuendo and crescendo play an important role in delivering light and shade.
Dysnomia could so easily have been a different album. Realising, after their first attempt at recording, that they had not made the quantum leap they felt they needed, they went back into the studio. Whilst the first version of the recording was more akin to their debut, using improvisation, the final cut is, as their label release describes it: "a brooding balancing act between a fascination with structure and a desire to create their own definition of dance music."
Beautifully produced by Rusty Santos, Dysnomia, perhaps reflects the stream-of-consciousness style of the album World I See, by Santos' own group, The Presents. Whatever the truth, there is clearly a positive creative dynamic at work between producer and band, that manifests itself in confident and perfectly-controlled sounds.
Bassist Aakaash Israni states:

"The spaces between the dialogues of the notes are filled by the body of the listener and they complete the circuit, leaving one option-to-dance."

This statement sheds, perhaps, an oblique light on the gestalt nature of this project, where the whole is greater than sum of its parts. In the case of Dawn of Midi the form-generating capabilities of our senses operate both with and between the sounds to produce a full and uniform whole. In a world where every gap is occupied and crammed with noise, where nothing is left to the imagination and the frenetic is preeminent, this is no easy achievement.
Sometimes the old can be used to shed light on the new and in doing so, deliver surprising results. With their instruments, traditional and steeped in classic jazz norms, Dawn of Midi have attempted to engineer their own take on dance music: to make "music to dance to, with or without shoes". In doing this, they have produced a beautiful and beguiling album: one to listen to with the lights out and with your eyes closed. Whether you leave your shoes on or not is entirely up to you.

Dawn of Midi's Dysnomia: A Track-By-Track Breakdown of its Astronomical and Mythological Implications

1. Io

Mythology
Hera is the Queen of the Gods and the goddess of women and marriage. She is also the wife and sister of Zeus. Io refers to her priestess, who Zeus seduced and then turned into a heifer as a means of protection. In order to keep watch over Io, Hera sent the one-hundred-eyed Argus Panoptes to watch over her -- but an intervention by Hermes led to Io's escape. From here, she roamed the world in her heifer form. Hera, was, however, not finished with Io and sent a gadfly to sting her repeatedly.
Astronomy
Io is the innermost moon of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter and is the fourth largest moon in the Solar System.
Painting by Casdiglione Giovanni Benedetto (1609-1663/65). Io the heifer; Zeus and Hera are seen in the background.

2. Sinope

Mythology
One of the daughters Asopus, Sinope was said to have been carried by the Greek god Apollo to the place where the city of the same name later stood. She also bore Apollo a son, named Syrus, who later became King of the Syrians.
Astronomy
Sinope is the name of an irregular satellite of Jupiter that was discovered in 1914. It did not receive its present name until 1975 and was sometimes called Hades between 1955 and 1975.

3. Atlas

Mythology
Atlas, one of a second generation of Titans and the brother of Prometheus in Greek legend, was punished by Zeus and made to carry the weight of the heavens (not the Earth as is sometimes thought) on his back. This punishment was handed down after Atlas led a rebellion against Zeus. Atlas is also said to be the god who instructed mankind in the art of astronomy.
Astronomy
Atlas is the inner moon of Saturn.

4. Nix

Mythology
Nix has a few possible interpretations. With the spelling Nyx, it refers to the Greek goddess of night who can be found at the beginning of creation. She is the mother of Thanatos, the daemon personification of death, and Hypnos, the daemon personification of sleep. Daemons, in Greek mythology, were benevolent spirits of nature rather than the malignant demons of Christianity.
Another possible reading is that of Nix (also Nixe/Nyx/Neck) of German legends. The Nix are water spirits who, although usually apparent in human form, can shape-shift. As river dwelling mermen or merwomen, they draw humans to their watery deaths.
Astronomy
Nix, taken from Greek mythology, is of one of Pluto's satellites that was discovered in 2005, along with Hydra, by the Hubble Space Telescope.

5. Moon

6. Ymir

Mythology
Ymir (pronounced ee-meer) is a primeval hermaphroditic giant and the first creature to come into being from a gaping abyss known as Ginnungagap. He is the ancestor of all jötnar (or jötunn in Old Norse), who are a mythological race living on one of the nine worlds of Norse cosmology. They are separated from Asgard, the world of the Æsir, or principal pantheon in Norse mythology, after being banished by the leading gods.
Astronomy
Ymir is a moon of Saturn that was discovered in the year 2000 and named in the year 2003.
Illustration by Lorendz Frølich; Ymir is attacked by his brothers Odin, Vili, and Vé

7. Ijiraq

Mythology
Ijiraq is a shape-shifting creature of Innuit mythology who kidnaps children and then abandons them in a hidden place. Living between two worlds, they can only be seen from the corner of the eye, in a fleeting moment, and are completely impossible to observe directly. Some Innuit believe that the Ijiraq came into being when their ancestors travelled too far north in search of game and became trapped between the world of living and the dead.
Astronomy
Ijiraq is a small irregular satellite of the planet Saturn; it was discovered in 2000 and named in 2003.

8. Algol

Mythology
Algol represents the Medusa's head with which Perseus turned Cetus to stone in Greek mythology. If Medusa was looked upon, her horrifying appearance would turn onlookers to stone.
Astronomy
In astronomical terms Algol, the Demon Star, was considered to be unlucky. The brightest star in Perseus, Algol is the prototype eclipsing binary of the type of stars known as Algol stars. An eclipsing binary is a star that appears as a single point of light when observed but is in fact two stars in close orbit around one another. The star takes its name from the Arabic word meaning "the demon's head" and is said to depict the terrifying snake-covered head of the Medusa monster.

To experience Saya Woolfalk's work is to become immersed in a scientific folklore where biology and anthropology inform fables of utopia. In Greek, "utopia" translates literally as "no" (ou) and "place" (topos), and in a collaborative series with anthropologist Rachel Lears, entitled No Place, Woolfalk posits ways in which "no placeians" can more readily become a part of a utopian society.

In her most recent development upon this theme, Woolfalk has incorporated a new element -- that of dual consciousness and foreign beings, via the narrative of a fictional species called Empathics. Through the use of psychedelically-colored exhibits, scientific slide shows, dance performances, and a very multi-disciplinary artistic practice, Woolfalk is learning how to use art shows to create utopian worlds in and of themselves.

When one enters Third Streaming in New York City to witness Woolfalk's current show, Chimera, one is immediately drawn to mannequins wearing felted costumes and floating on brightly-painted, patterned murals. These are Empathics, a new and fictional species in Woolfalk's work, who contain genetic elements of both plants and humans. Their existence is a sci-fi-inspired commentary that speaks to many things -- including the transformation of identities through biological hybridization -- but the more important underlying vision is that of increased unity across all forms of existence. To express this singular vision through craft, Woolfalk utilizes an impressive array of mediums; murals and installations are supplemented by huge, full-color lithographs of Empathics in their costumes, as well as paintings created "by them" and displays of objects used in their fictional rituals.

Folkloric and scientific, fable-driven and meticulously chronicled, Woolfalk's exhibits also show her as both participant and narrator. In her videos, Woolfalk narrates as a scientist, with the resolute calm found in any biology film. But her work deviates from the usual script in that the scientists describe a transformation they themselves undergo. Woolfalk and "other scientists" find evidence of Empathics in the wilderness of Upstate New York, and through exposure to their bones and spores, decide to undergo a series of changes that will lead them towards becoming chimeras themselves. Over the twinkle of atmospheric music, animations break down the ways in which spores enter the human body -- but one soon finds that this is not only a biological transformation; it is also mystical. The scientists enter a ritual of guided dream therapy to learn how to embody their new state of plant-human consciousness, and through the introduction of a performance art element, the transformed beings emerge from behind the wall where the video is being projected, donning costumes that are on display.

The merging of a complete physical and digital reality is what Woolfalk says makes her utopian-driven work "real". "When you come in[to the gallery], I want you to be in a world -- but it's our world," she explains.

The world within the exhibit also reacts to the world outside the exhibit. Mythology dictates that Empathics create beautiful headdresses to disguise a second head which sprouts as part of their shift to dual consciousness, and such guises helps keep things from getting awkward in public or at their jobs. They also literally sell their skins; magical costumes they shed during the process help bring in extra income for their research. Regarding this very intentional detail, Woolfalk laughs and describes living in Brazil and studying folkloric performance, where "people are engaging in fantastic stories about struggle... and simultaneously selling trinkets because they need them... they actually help pay the bills."

SAYA WOOLFALK ARTIST INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

Woolfalk's work is "becoming more of a fable" as it progresses, acting as a fantastical other reality that reflects the artist's real-life external influences. The creation of Empathics, for example, was first inspired by the works of feminist science fiction author Octavia Butler, who discussed the idea of plant-human utopia.

"Originally, it was about physical action and ritual that would make [a] new place," explains Woolfalk. But when conceptualizing what this transformation process would look like, Woolfalk began speaking to biologists at Tufts. Through discussions of the natural world, she began to "rethink physical adaptation and metamorphosis".

"It's not just that humans can just act on their environment and become whatever they chose to; the places that they are, the things that they encounter cause micro-transformations," Woolfalk continues.

Such a statement is more than just environmental or a comment on slow changes through intuitive guidance. Woolfalk seeks to "break down categorization -- not just human, animal, or interracial, but also intercultural or interbiological." She welcomes "the possibility of all kinds of mixing", and notes that her next iteration upon this theme "is the idea of consciousness between humans and technology."

As Woolfalk continues to develop as an artist, she is not only incorporating the influence of anthropologists and science fiction writers, or folklore and biology. She is also growing to incorporate her audience as part of the exhibits. For her, "Audience has become part of the structure and circuit. I consider how their experiencing what I'm doing in order to feed it back more clearly."

Woolfalk's multi-faceted works all shrink down to a very natural process of evolution -- one that welcomes the inclusive mixture of many ideas and techniques. Though each of Woolfalk's works is fully-conceptualized prior to its creation, its final product is ultimately unpredictable, subject to flux as her ideas morph through what she consumes and how her mind processes. Each piece is "changing and emerging as it's restructured by the logics I've been thinking about," she explains. "[It is natural] to work in two dimensions -- then three dimensions, then four dimensions... There's a porous relationship between the pieces. It's an organic process between logic and intuition."

Come catch the last days of Woolfalk's exhibits and your chance to feedback into collective consciousnesses.

Chimera at 3rd Streaming in NYCChimera runs through April 25th, 2013. A talk entitled "Brave New Land: Science Fiction in Contemporary Art" will take place on Wednesday, April 24th, 2013, featuring Saya Woolfalk, Chitra Ganesh, and Simone Leigh. Doors at 6:00; Discussion promptly at 6:30.

Space Is The Place @ Disjecta in Portland, Oregon
The group show, featuring works by Saya Woolfalk, Wendy Red Star, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and David Huffman, will end on April 27th, 2013. Admission is free, and Disjecta is open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

To experience Saya Woolfalk's work is to become immersed in a scientific folklore where biology and anthropology inform fables of utopia. In Greek, "utopia" translates literally as "no" (ou) and "place" (topos), and in a collaborative series with anthropologist Rachel Lears, entitled No Place, Woolfalk posits ways in which "no placeians" can more readily become a part of a utopian society.
In her most recent development upon this theme, Woolfalk has incorporated a new element -- that of dual consciousness and foreign beings, via the narrative of a fictional species called Empathics. Through the use of psychedelically-colored exhibits, scientific slide shows, dance performances, and a very multi-disciplinary artistic practice, Woolfalk is learning how to use art shows to create utopian worlds in and of themselves.

When one enters Third Streaming in New York City to witness Woolfalk's current show, Chimera, one is immediately drawn to mannequins wearing felted costumes and floating on brightly-painted, patterned murals. These are Empathics, a new and fictional species in Woolfalk's work, who contain genetic elements of both plants and humans. Their existence is a sci-fi-inspired commentary that speaks to many things -- including the transformation of identities through biological hybridization -- but the more important underlying vision is that of increased unity across all forms of existence. To express this singular vision through craft, Woolfalk utilizes an impressive array of mediums; murals and installations are supplemented by huge, full-color lithographs of Empathics in their costumes, as well as paintings created "by them" and displays of objects used in their fictional rituals.
Folkloric and scientific, fable-driven and meticulously chronicled, Woolfalk's exhibits also show her as both participant and narrator. In her videos, Woolfalk narrates as a scientist, with the resolute calm found in any biology film. But her work deviates from the usual script in that the scientists describe a transformation they themselves undergo. Woolfalk and "other scientists" find evidence of Empathics in the wilderness of Upstate New York, and through exposure to their bones and spores, decide to undergo a series of changes that will lead them towards becoming chimeras themselves. Over the twinkle of atmospheric music, animations break down the ways in which spores enter the human body -- but one soon finds that this is not only a biological transformation; it is also mystical. The scientists enter a ritual of guided dream therapy to learn how to embody their new state of plant-human consciousness, and through the introduction of a performance art element, the transformed beings emerge from behind the wall where the video is being projected, donning costumes that are on display.
The merging of a complete physical and digital reality is what Woolfalk says makes her utopian-driven work "real". "When you come in[to the gallery], I want you to be in a world -- but it's our world," she explains.
The world within the exhibit also reacts to the world outside the exhibit. Mythology dictates that Empathics create beautiful headdresses to disguise a second head which sprouts as part of their shift to dual consciousness, and such guises helps keep things from getting awkward in public or at their jobs. They also literally sell their skins; magical costumes they shed during the process help bring in extra income for their research. Regarding this very intentional detail, Woolfalk laughs and describes living in Brazil and studying folkloric performance, where "people are engaging in fantastic stories about struggle... and simultaneously selling trinkets because they need them... they actually help pay the bills."

SAYA WOOLFALK ARTIST INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

Woolfalk's work is "becoming more of a fable" as it progresses, acting as a fantastical other reality that reflects the artist's real-life external influences. The creation of Empathics, for example, was first inspired by the works of feminist science fiction author Octavia Butler, who discussed the idea of plant-human utopia.
"Originally, it was about physical action and ritual that would make [a] new place," explains Woolfalk. But when conceptualizing what this transformation process would look like, Woolfalk began speaking to biologists at Tufts. Through discussions of the natural world, she began to "rethink physical adaptation and metamorphosis".
"It's not just that humans can just act on their environment and become whatever they chose to; the places that they are, the things that they encounter cause micro-transformations," Woolfalk continues.
Such a statement is more than just environmental or a comment on slow changes through intuitive guidance. Woolfalk seeks to "break down categorization -- not just human, animal, or interracial, but also intercultural or interbiological." She welcomes "the possibility of all kinds of mixing", and notes that her next iteration upon this theme "is the idea of consciousness between humans and technology."
As Woolfalk continues to develop as an artist, she is not only incorporating the influence of anthropologists and science fiction writers, or folklore and biology. She is also growing to incorporate her audience as part of the exhibits. For her, "Audience has become part of the structure and circuit. I consider how their experiencing what I'm doing in order to feed it back more clearly."
Woolfalk's multi-faceted works all shrink down to a very natural process of evolution -- one that welcomes the inclusive mixture of many ideas and techniques. Though each of Woolfalk's works is fully-conceptualized prior to its creation, its final product is ultimately unpredictable, subject to flux as her ideas morph through what she consumes and how her mind processes. Each piece is "changing and emerging as it's restructured by the logics I've been thinking about," she explains. "[It is natural] to work in two dimensions -- then three dimensions, then four dimensions... There's a porous relationship between the pieces. It's an organic process between logic and intuition."

Come catch the last days of Woolfalk's exhibits and your chance to feedback into collective consciousnesses.
Chimera at 3rd Streaming in NYCChimera runs through April 25th, 2013. A talk entitled "Brave New Land: Science Fiction in Contemporary Art" will take place on Wednesday, April 24th, 2013, featuring Saya Woolfalk, Chitra Ganesh, and Simone Leigh. Doors at 6:00; Discussion promptly at 6:30.
Space Is The Place @ Disjecta in Portland, Oregon
The group show, featuring works by Saya Woolfalk, Wendy Red Star, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and David Huffman, will end on April 27th, 2013. Admission is free, and Disjecta is open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Decades in the making, the musical duo Matmos have built upon their noisy and experimental past to create increasingly conceptual albums that collide together many worlds of thought and style. On their latest album, The Marriage of True Minds, M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel have properly outdone themselves, this time basing their project on a concept so well-crafted that its exact specifications shall never be known by anyone save for the band members themselves.

At the heart of these vagaries are experiments in extrasensory projections -- that's right, ESP -- though be not fooled: Matmos are skeptical in their own way. Daniel is quick to drop the fun fact that belief in ESP is still considered a symptom of schizophrenia, so outlandish it seems to scientific professionals -- but all that hardly matters in the context of Matmos' project, for they aren't looking to shift any scientific paradigms. No, they are looking to shift their own musical paradigm, and five years of conducting artistic ESP research and synthesizing its results have led to what may perhaps be the band's most exciting record yet. What's more, Matmos have proven that growing with age and experience have not made them any tamer. Their apparently unyielding desire to explore the strange and experimental is as strong as ever, even if it is taking on many different shapes along the way.

"I liked the idea that there was simultaneously total honesty about what we did but also this kind of hard kernel which was obscured." -- Drew Daniel of Matmos, on the concept of The Marriage of True Minds

Parapsychological Concepts Shuffled in Through the Side Door

When brainstorming on how to take Matmos' legacy one step further, Daniel, being the English professor and academic that he is, fell in brain-with a meta-concept. Instead of simply making a concept album and sharing its particulars, why not make a concept album with a concept that will never be truly revealed?

"The situation that we're in now -- where I make art and I have to talk about why I have to do it -- when you've done this for eighteen, twenty years, that starts to affect the way you think about it. There's art, and then there's discourse about the art," explains Daniel. "How can I respond to [our reputation for concept albums] and create a situation in which I never actually reveal the concept?... what that was a telepathic situation..."

The Marriage of True Minds is primarily based on a series of Ganzfeld experiments, designed to test individuals for ESP. Participants were placed into mild sensory deprivation, wearing ping-pong balls over their eyes and headphones playing white noise. Daniel then attempted to telepathically transmit to them the basic concept of the record, and participants would relay aloud what they saw, heard, or felt. Using a combination of collaged fragments from these recorded sessions and original material, the album was eventually constructed. This basic premise is no secret; Matmos made it public early on. But even though one can see both the responses from participants and Matmos' eventual musical output as crafted from those responses, a bit of a chicken and the egg conundrum remains; it's unclear which elements informed which, since Daniel's exact transmissions have remained a mystery.

"[The concept is] not disclosed in any other way than through this attempt to transmit, which is already fraught with all kinds of charlatanry..." says Daniel. "I liked the idea that there was simultaneously total honesty about what we did but also this kind of hard kernel which was obscured."

Rather than conducting ESP experiments, Matmos could simply have created an album concept and never revealed it to anyone -- but the route they took was much more exciting than a simply obscured one. Matmos aren't insidiously leaving listeners in the dark with no way out, but have left behind plenty of bread crumbs which could help anyone who is curious and willing piece together bits of the puzzle. In the end, you probably still won't know what exactly the cookie in their pocket tastes like, but you can become increasingly certain that what they have is a cookie and not a leg of lamb. Thanks to the slippery nature of the mind, one can hone in on the exact concept in only infinitely smaller degrees, never likely to reach its true nature.

"When I narrate it, I guess I would say that I always had one thought, and the thought was the concept of the new Matmos album. But concepts, as such, can have both sonic and visual and semantic content and formal content. And that's kind of what's beautiful about language, right?" explains Daniel. "The word ‘knife' denotes a signifier but it also has all of this kind of funny, seemingly arbitrary stuff about k's and n's and soft f sounds and hard kuh sounds that any concept you try to hold and focus winds up leading to all of these associative tendrils that lead out from its singularity."

MATMOS BAND INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

Matmos - "Very Large Green Triangles" Music Video

This music video was initially constructed by l.inc design using only the original transcript from musician Ed Schrader's psychic session; they did not hear the track itself until the final cut.

Drew Daniel: What's fun about playing ["Very Large Green Triangles"] live or the existence of that video is -- here's this moment that Ed Schrader had, lying on a mattress, that was just a transient thought -- and now all these people are kind of taking it very seriously and really trying to dwell upon it.

M.C. Schmidt: And now thousands of people have watched that video and gone, "Hmm!"

Drew Daniel: Out of some moment that we all have, all day long – that sort of ticker-tape of tumbling thoughts and feelings that we don’t really treat as worth all that much; they're just here and then they're gone. I like that sort of memorial aspect of it -- of, let's return to this fleeting thing, and keep dwelling on it.

Love in darkness. Machine noise. Some speaking. Smoke. Whispering. A derive around the city. Fresh fruit in your hand. A city that works, functions. Sort of skipping in the pavement. Find the metros. Adverts made up. Fresh sky. Turn into a bakery. Buy a baguette. Fresh bread. Walk out again. Keep on walking until you reach … reach the end of the road. Suddenly see a storm. At the center of it there’s a black polygon. It’s kind of … what shape is it? Slowly moving. Out towards the boundaries of the space.

"I see the infinity symbol morphing into a Gordian knot. Scribbles on a piece of paper or an electron cloud. Jesus Christ on the cross. An hourglass. Some sort of insect that’s bifurcated with many legs and small black eyes. Flaming scythe sort of moving in circles, creating the effect of a tornado viewed from above. Some sort of cube with a star of David jutting out from its sides. A galaxy viewed from far away slowly whirling around its center."

"The noise is undulating. It’s like a wavering maybe. It’s hard to speak because the sound of my voice is interrupting. There’s like a white triangle. Waves. There are waves. They kind of pulse. One, two, three, four, five. Waves of darkness that pulse in and out. They’re really regular. They move into the circle, there’s like a circle at the center. A circle of white and the blackness consumes it. It disappears and it disappears and it disappears, disappears. A bit slower. Disappears. Speeds up. It’s like these luminous rings and they move away. Everything is slower. They dissolve. Now there’s just a stillness."

"What we end up giving to the world is really meager compared to the incredible amount of stuff that we've seen and heard as a result of it." -- M.C. Schmidt of Matmos

The Beauty of Interpretation

Even if Daniel wanted to -- which he doesn't -- it seems likely that even he couldn't even relay with exact precision what he was transmitting, for even in concentrated and intentional states of thought, the mind wanders and associates however it feels compelled to. What is more important, then, is that their clever idea has the potential to be recycled henceforth into infinity, by them or by others.

"We really could keep going. There are so many transcripts that are so awesome. One of them... should so clearly be a thirty-minute film on its own," says Schmidt.

"The results of the experiment -- when we did the first one -- were so poetic and beautiful and just weird that I felt like, 'Oh, this could really be a record, and not just a gag,'" adds Daniel.

Matmos collected so much material from their sessions -- which were pulled from experiments at their home with friends and acquaintances, as well as at a residency at the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford -- that they created a Tumblr blog to "slowly... cough out all of the transcripts and photos". The Tumblr is a multimedia gold mine of documentation, containing text transcripts, bizarre book excerpts, and images of sonic patterns from the sessions, all designed to encourage philosophical questioning of whether the images, the words, or the thoughts were the "real" original source, or some combination of all those things. The level to which Matmos have likely thought about all aspects of this project seems fairly preposterous, but also makes sense when one strains to understand the mode under which they operate.

While all albums are crafted through extensive decision-making processes, The Marriage of True Minds required Matmos to facilitate and then wade through mountains of source material, while attempting not to be bogged down by the weight of infinite possibility. Such decisions are not always easy, which might be part of the reason the record took five years to create.

"On our end, it was kind of a free association of -- ‘How do we want to work with this transcript?' We would be very loyal to the details in the cases of some songs, and with other songs, we would be really loose, and say, ‘Well, I want to use this, and I want to use this, and I want to use this'", Daniel recalls. "There were all sorts of choices that we got to make -- and that's the fun start with working in this sort of conceptual restraint manner. It doesn't mean that you have no freedom; you actually have tremendous freedom. I think it almost foregrounds the freedom because of how you interpret."

The source materials Matmos had to work with were often extremely abstract. Perhaps they'd choose to incorporate a pentatonic melody someone heard, or Chinese checkers someone saw, or the sound of metal brackets. But what does any of that mean, and how can it all be translated into a cohesive sonic product? The methods of construction were as variable as the sources themselves. During the beginning of the process, Matmos would project ideas to participants on a track-by-track basis. Later on, the format became much looser.

With the album's first single, "Very Green Triangles", a transcript from musician Ed Shrader was used almost in its entirety. In the similarly-themed "In Search of a Lost Faculty", varied triangular visions were turned into a sonic collage.

"It was late in the game when we decided, 'Let's make a song that's all the triangle images from every session and kind of pull across things from lots of sessions,'" says Daniel.

The mystery of the triangles is one that stands strong on its own and by default, brings up one question that begs to be answered: were triangles a part of Matmos' original album concept? It seems that either Matmos are clever tricksters who have considered this question inside and out -- including how they might talk about it in interviews -- or the phenomenon was completely unrelated to their original transmissions.

"We didn't know that the triangles were going to be there until we listened to them all, and we were like, ‘Oh, boy, people sure are talking about triangles a lot,'" says Schmidt.

"We even speculated that maybe the kids at Oxford had a joke between them of, 'Let's all talk about triangles,' because it was eerie," Daniel adds. He later expands on the band's other theory that prior to each session, the last thing participants saw before lying down was the camera hanging in the air above them, the legs of a tripod forming a triangle.

Another unknown of the whole project is how much psychic potential the band members or their participants had by default. Nobody was screened, and everyone was allowed to participate. The large sample size truly allowed Matmos the ability to see the studies not just in terms of the response, but in terms of how the responses varied when external factors -- including themselves -- were taken into consideration. They learned early on, for example, that intoxicated individuals would give amusing responses, but not of the caliber that they were looking for. They also learned that people who were not familiar with them were preferable in a lot of ways.

"We noticed that people who were too familiar with our work would sometimes produce kind of parodic versions of perhaps what they thought we wanted -- and that concerned me," says Daniel. "I'm glad we had a chance through the residencies to deal with people who –"

"Had no idea who we were," finishes Schmidt.

"Yeah, had no agenda," Daniel continues. "Or, you know, just older academics at Oxford, professors –"

"Who really had no interest in who we were," Schmidt finishes again, this time with more oomph.

"[They] just didn't care, and could approach the experiment as just an experiment... and it was really helpful -- the more we did it, to start to think about the patterns that emerged, and to sort of watch the album happen. I mean, it's a little like looking at faces in the fire; if you think that you're going to see them, you start to see noses and eyes, so out of this morass something starts to emerge -- and you think that it's there, but maybe it's you," hypothesizes Daniel.

Through the years and all of the possibilities that have come and gone with The Marriage of True Minds and its related projects, it's exciting to know that Matmos are still in love with their original meta-concept and still find humor in the fine push-pull of sharing and not sharing its details. Schmidt's closing thought on this topic is a humble representation of their love for this.

"What we end up giving to the world," he says, "is really meager compared to the incredible amount of stuff that we've seen and heard as a result of it." say

Organized Chaos That Can Crumble At Any Second:
Matmos' Live Performances

Matmos were recently invited by Antony -- yes, the Antony Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnsons -- to participate in a sure-to-be unbelievable play called The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, starring Antony, the mind-bending performance artist Marina Abramovic, and the formidable William Dafoe. As members of the play's orchestra ensemble, Matmos have become cogs in an entertainment piece that unfolds nightly with the same calculated precision. They describe their inclusion in the project as "healthy" for their growth as musicians, but when left to their own devices, are far removed from this world. In the face of such professional excellence, Matmos are hesitant to call themselves "musicians".

When they say "musicians", they say it in the classical sense of the word, referring to those who can understand notations on an advanced level and those who speak in an extremely specific language understood only by select trained individuals. Matmos undoubtedly have their own technical jargons and abilities, but their methods of creation are not at all precise. Witness any of Matmos' live shows, and the overwhelming feeling is of organized chaos, even when they are playing well-structured songs. Such a feel comes through in many ways, visually and aurally, through the use of abstract film footage created by Schmidt as well as in-place processes for spontaneous creation and potential combustion.

In an electronic music climate where mega-DJs around the world are openly lamenting the rigidity of music software and necessity of pre-programming sets to avoid catastrophe, Matmos stand firm as electronic music purveyors who thread their life philosophies and aesthetic approaches into all aspects of their artistic creations, even if they're risky.

"Maybe this is pompous, but we live at a time where the whole domain of music is sort of receding relative to the emergence of social media, other tools, other ways of organizing your identity. And so, I have put a lot of emphasis on believing in performance as the only way that music will continue to assert its autonomy or its dignity or what it has that other things don't have," explains Daniel. "I think that feeling of exposure or risk of, 'What if the voice cracks?' or, 'What if the band plays a clam?' or, 'What if the drum solo sucks?' That risk is actually the thing that is why people perceive live performance -- not just the perfection of the gymnast that lands on her feet, but that whole question of, 'Will she stumble?' That's the appeal. It's very, very different from a lot of other kinds of culture, and I want our form of electronic music to have that risk in it. It's just hard because the tools and software itself is designed to kind of keep that at a minimum."

To sidestep this issue, Matmos' general formula enables Schmidt to roam free on keyboards and conduct experiments with random "instruments", including balloons which he strokes in provocative fashions or kazoos that he blows in and out of a bowl of water. Meanwhile, the band's hired touring musicians manically try to keep up with the duo's off-the-cuff approach, and Daniel matches and manages beats in a way that he describes as "equivalent to a hobo who's going to jump on a train." With two unsynced computers running Ableton at varying tempos, Daniel confounds Ableton's creators as he taps in tempos on the fly to try and stay in sync, rather than allowing the rhythms to be synced mechanically.

"Will I land, or will I just face-plant?" Daniel asks, questioning his methodology. "Musically, it's a drag if I [face-plant], but I like that choice so far."

On any given night, Matmos are more likely to look and sound amazing than not, but it is the underlying imperfection of their sets, the unspoken possibility of things falling apart at any second, which makes Matmos' live shows so compelling.

Decades in the making, the musical duo Matmos have built upon their noisy and experimental past to create increasingly conceptual albums that collide together many worlds of thought and style. On their latest album, The Marriage of True Minds, M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel have properly outdone themselves, this time basing their project on a concept so well-crafted that its exact specifications shall never be known by anyone save for the band members themselves.
At the heart of these vagaries are experiments in extrasensory projections -- that's right, ESP -- though be not fooled: Matmos are skeptical in their own way. Daniel is quick to drop the fun fact that belief in ESP is still considered a symptom of schizophrenia, so outlandish it seems to scientific professionals -- but all that hardly matters in the context of Matmos' project, for they aren't looking to shift any scientific paradigms. No, they are looking to shift their own musical paradigm, and five years of conducting artistic ESP research and synthesizing its results have led to what may perhaps be the band's most exciting record yet. What's more, Matmos have proven that growing with age and experience have not made them any tamer. Their apparently unyielding desire to explore the strange and experimental is as strong as ever, even if it is taking on many different shapes along the way.

"I liked the idea that there was simultaneously total honesty about what we did but also this kind of hard kernel which was obscured." -- Drew Daniel of Matmos, on the concept of The Marriage of True Minds

Parapsychological Concepts Shuffled in Through the Side Door

When brainstorming on how to take Matmos' legacy one step further, Daniel, being the English professor and academic that he is, fell in brain-with a meta-concept. Instead of simply making a concept album and sharing its particulars, why not make a concept album with a concept that will never be truly revealed?
"The situation that we're in now -- where I make art and I have to talk about why I have to do it -- when you've done this for eighteen, twenty years, that starts to affect the way you think about it. There's art, and then there's discourse about the art," explains Daniel. "How can I respond to [our reputation for concept albums] and create a situation in which I never actually reveal the concept?... what that was a telepathic situation..."
The Marriage of True Minds is primarily based on a series of Ganzfeld experiments, designed to test individuals for ESP. Participants were placed into mild sensory deprivation, wearing ping-pong balls over their eyes and headphones playing white noise. Daniel then attempted to telepathically transmit to them the basic concept of the record, and participants would relay aloud what they saw, heard, or felt. Using a combination of collaged fragments from these recorded sessions and original material, the album was eventually constructed. This basic premise is no secret; Matmos made it public early on. But even though one can see both the responses from participants and Matmos' eventual musical output as crafted from those responses, a bit of a chicken and the egg conundrum remains; it's unclear which elements informed which, since Daniel's exact transmissions have remained a mystery.
"[The concept is] not disclosed in any other way than through this attempt to transmit, which is already fraught with all kinds of charlatanry..." says Daniel. "I liked the idea that there was simultaneously total honesty about what we did but also this kind of hard kernel which was obscured."
Rather than conducting ESP experiments, Matmos could simply have created an album concept and never revealed it to anyone -- but the route they took was much more exciting than a simply obscured one. Matmos aren't insidiously leaving listeners in the dark with no way out, but have left behind plenty of bread crumbs which could help anyone who is curious and willing piece together bits of the puzzle. In the end, you probably still won't know what exactly the cookie in their pocket tastes like, but you can become increasingly certain that what they have is a cookie and not a leg of lamb. Thanks to the slippery nature of the mind, one can hone in on the exact concept in only infinitely smaller degrees, never likely to reach its true nature.
"When I narrate it, I guess I would say that I always had one thought, and the thought was the concept of the new Matmos album. But concepts, as such, can have both sonic and visual and semantic content and formal content. And that's kind of what's beautiful about language, right?" explains Daniel. "The word ‘knife' denotes a signifier but it also has all of this kind of funny, seemingly arbitrary stuff about k's and n's and soft f sounds and hard kuh sounds that any concept you try to hold and focus winds up leading to all of these associative tendrils that lead out from its singularity."

MATMOS BAND INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

Matmos - "Very Large Green Triangles" Music Video

This music video was initially constructed by l.inc design using only the original transcript from musician Ed Schrader's psychic session; they did not hear the track itself until the final cut.
Drew Daniel: What's fun about playing ["Very Large Green Triangles"] live or the existence of that video is -- here's this moment that Ed Schrader had, lying on a mattress, that was just a transient thought -- and now all these people are kind of taking it very seriously and really trying to dwell upon it.
M.C. Schmidt: And now thousands of people have watched that video and gone, "Hmm!"
Drew Daniel: Out of some moment that we all have, all day long – that sort of ticker-tape of tumbling thoughts and feelings that we don’t really treat as worth all that much; they're just here and then they're gone. I like that sort of memorial aspect of it -- of, let's return to this fleeting thing, and keep dwelling on it.

Love in darkness. Machine noise. Some speaking. Smoke. Whispering. A derive around the city. Fresh fruit in your hand. A city that works, functions. Sort of skipping in the pavement. Find the metros. Adverts made up. Fresh sky. Turn into a bakery. Buy a baguette. Fresh bread. Walk out again. Keep on walking until you reach … reach the end of the road. Suddenly see a storm. At the center of it there’s a black polygon. It’s kind of … what shape is it? Slowly moving. Out towards the boundaries of the space."I see the infinity symbol morphing into a Gordian knot. Scribbles on a piece of paper or an electron cloud. Jesus Christ on the cross. An hourglass. Some sort of insect that’s bifurcated with many legs and small black eyes. Flaming scythe sort of moving in circles, creating the effect of a tornado viewed from above. Some sort of cube with a star of David jutting out from its sides. A galaxy viewed from far away slowly whirling around its center.""The noise is undulating. It’s like a wavering maybe. It’s hard to speak because the sound of my voice is interrupting. There’s like a white triangle. Waves. There are waves. They kind of pulse. One, two, three, four, five. Waves of darkness that pulse in and out. They’re really regular. They move into the circle, there’s like a circle at the center. A circle of white and the blackness consumes it. It disappears and it disappears and it disappears, disappears. A bit slower. Disappears. Speeds up. It’s like these luminous rings and they move away. Everything is slower. They dissolve. Now there’s just a stillness."Trilling flutes. Clashing. Birds. Traffic. Expressway bridge. Distant trumpet. More flutes. Steps down a hallway. Doors. Kind of a grunting, an UGH. More trumpets, like an alarum. Woman whispering. Quiet. Birds, birds again. A fountain. Quiet. Distant conversation, not really audible. I know it’s conversation, at the fringe of your hearing. More flutes. High strings, and a siren. Whispering, a sigh. Someone saying “I don’t know.” A woman’s voice. “I don’t know.” Three notes struck hard, like on a piano. Someone jokes. Conveyor belt. Boxes dropping. Red.

"What we end up giving to the world is really meager compared to the incredible amount of stuff that we've seen and heard as a result of it." -- M.C. Schmidt of Matmos

The Beauty of Interpretation

Even if Daniel wanted to -- which he doesn't -- it seems likely that even he couldn't even relay with exact precision what he was transmitting, for even in concentrated and intentional states of thought, the mind wanders and associates however it feels compelled to. What is more important, then, is that their clever idea has the potential to be recycled henceforth into infinity, by them or by others.
"We really could keep going. There are so many transcripts that are so awesome. One of them... should so clearly be a thirty-minute film on its own," says Schmidt.
"The results of the experiment -- when we did the first one -- were so poetic and beautiful and just weird that I felt like, 'Oh, this could really be a record, and not just a gag,'" adds Daniel.
Matmos collected so much material from their sessions -- which were pulled from experiments at their home with friends and acquaintances, as well as at a residency at the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford -- that they created a Tumblr blog to "slowly... cough out all of the transcripts and photos". The Tumblr is a multimedia gold mine of documentation, containing text transcripts, bizarre book excerpts, and images of sonic patterns from the sessions, all designed to encourage philosophical questioning of whether the images, the words, or the thoughts were the "real" original source, or some combination of all those things. The level to which Matmos have likely thought about all aspects of this project seems fairly preposterous, but also makes sense when one strains to understand the mode under which they operate.
While all albums are crafted through extensive decision-making processes, The Marriage of True Minds required Matmos to facilitate and then wade through mountains of source material, while attempting not to be bogged down by the weight of infinite possibility. Such decisions are not always easy, which might be part of the reason the record took five years to create.
"On our end, it was kind of a free association of -- ‘How do we want to work with this transcript?' We would be very loyal to the details in the cases of some songs, and with other songs, we would be really loose, and say, ‘Well, I want to use this, and I want to use this, and I want to use this'", Daniel recalls. "There were all sorts of choices that we got to make -- and that's the fun start with working in this sort of conceptual restraint manner. It doesn't mean that you have no freedom; you actually have tremendous freedom. I think it almost foregrounds the freedom because of how you interpret."
The source materials Matmos had to work with were often extremely abstract. Perhaps they'd choose to incorporate a pentatonic melody someone heard, or Chinese checkers someone saw, or the sound of metal brackets. But what does any of that mean, and how can it all be translated into a cohesive sonic product? The methods of construction were as variable as the sources themselves. During the beginning of the process, Matmos would project ideas to participants on a track-by-track basis. Later on, the format became much looser.
With the album's first single, "Very Green Triangles", a transcript from musician Ed Shrader was used almost in its entirety. In the similarly-themed "In Search of a Lost Faculty", varied triangular visions were turned into a sonic collage.
"It was late in the game when we decided, 'Let's make a song that's all the triangle images from every session and kind of pull across things from lots of sessions,'" says Daniel.
The mystery of the triangles is one that stands strong on its own and by default, brings up one question that begs to be answered: were triangles a part of Matmos' original album concept? It seems that either Matmos are clever tricksters who have considered this question inside and out -- including how they might talk about it in interviews -- or the phenomenon was completely unrelated to their original transmissions.
"We didn't know that the triangles were going to be there until we listened to them all, and we were like, ‘Oh, boy, people sure are talking about triangles a lot,'" says Schmidt.
"We even speculated that maybe the kids at Oxford had a joke between them of, 'Let's all talk about triangles,' because it was eerie," Daniel adds. He later expands on the band's other theory that prior to each session, the last thing participants saw before lying down was the camera hanging in the air above them, the legs of a tripod forming a triangle.
Another unknown of the whole project is how much psychic potential the band members or their participants had by default. Nobody was screened, and everyone was allowed to participate. The large sample size truly allowed Matmos the ability to see the studies not just in terms of the response, but in terms of how the responses varied when external factors -- including themselves -- were taken into consideration. They learned early on, for example, that intoxicated individuals would give amusing responses, but not of the caliber that they were looking for. They also learned that people who were not familiar with them were preferable in a lot of ways.
"We noticed that people who were too familiar with our work would sometimes produce kind of parodic versions of perhaps what they thought we wanted -- and that concerned me," says Daniel. "I'm glad we had a chance through the residencies to deal with people who –"
"Had no idea who we were," finishes Schmidt.
"Yeah, had no agenda," Daniel continues. "Or, you know, just older academics at Oxford, professors –"
"Who really had no interest in who we were," Schmidt finishes again, this time with more oomph.
"[They] just didn't care, and could approach the experiment as just an experiment... and it was really helpful -- the more we did it, to start to think about the patterns that emerged, and to sort of watch the album happen. I mean, it's a little like looking at faces in the fire; if you think that you're going to see them, you start to see noses and eyes, so out of this morass something starts to emerge -- and you think that it's there, but maybe it's you," hypothesizes Daniel.
Through the years and all of the possibilities that have come and gone with The Marriage of True Minds and its related projects, it's exciting to know that Matmos are still in love with their original meta-concept and still find humor in the fine push-pull of sharing and not sharing its details. Schmidt's closing thought on this topic is a humble representation of their love for this.
"What we end up giving to the world," he says, "is really meager compared to the incredible amount of stuff that we've seen and heard as a result of it." say

Organized Chaos That Can Crumble At Any Second:
Matmos' Live Performances

Matmos were recently invited by Antony -- yes, the Antony Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnsons -- to participate in a sure-to-be unbelievable play called The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, starring Antony, the mind-bending performance artist Marina Abramovic, and the formidable William Dafoe. As members of the play's orchestra ensemble, Matmos have become cogs in an entertainment piece that unfolds nightly with the same calculated precision. They describe their inclusion in the project as "healthy" for their growth as musicians, but when left to their own devices, are far removed from this world. In the face of such professional excellence, Matmos are hesitant to call themselves "musicians".
When they say "musicians", they say it in the classical sense of the word, referring to those who can understand notations on an advanced level and those who speak in an extremely specific language understood only by select trained individuals. Matmos undoubtedly have their own technical jargons and abilities, but their methods of creation are not at all precise. Witness any of Matmos' live shows, and the overwhelming feeling is of organized chaos, even when they are playing well-structured songs. Such a feel comes through in many ways, visually and aurally, through the use of abstract film footage created by Schmidt as well as in-place processes for spontaneous creation and potential combustion.
In an electronic music climate where mega-DJs around the world are openly lamenting the rigidity of music software and necessity of pre-programming sets to avoid catastrophe, Matmos stand firm as electronic music purveyors who thread their life philosophies and aesthetic approaches into all aspects of their artistic creations, even if they're risky.
"Maybe this is pompous, but we live at a time where the whole domain of music is sort of receding relative to the emergence of social media, other tools, other ways of organizing your identity. And so, I have put a lot of emphasis on believing in performance as the only way that music will continue to assert its autonomy or its dignity or what it has that other things don't have," explains Daniel. "I think that feeling of exposure or risk of, 'What if the voice cracks?' or, 'What if the band plays a clam?' or, 'What if the drum solo sucks?' That risk is actually the thing that is why people perceive live performance -- not just the perfection of the gymnast that lands on her feet, but that whole question of, 'Will she stumble?' That's the appeal. It's very, very different from a lot of other kinds of culture, and I want our form of electronic music to have that risk in it. It's just hard because the tools and software itself is designed to kind of keep that at a minimum."
To sidestep this issue, Matmos' general formula enables Schmidt to roam free on keyboards and conduct experiments with random "instruments", including balloons which he strokes in provocative fashions or kazoos that he blows in and out of a bowl of water. Meanwhile, the band's hired touring musicians manically try to keep up with the duo's off-the-cuff approach, and Daniel matches and manages beats in a way that he describes as "equivalent to a hobo who's going to jump on a train." With two unsynced computers running Ableton at varying tempos, Daniel confounds Ableton's creators as he taps in tempos on the fly to try and stay in sync, rather than allowing the rhythms to be synced mechanically.
"Will I land, or will I just face-plant?" Daniel asks, questioning his methodology. "Musically, it's a drag if I [face-plant], but I like that choice so far."
On any given night, Matmos are more likely to look and sound amazing than not, but it is the underlying imperfection of their sets, the unspoken possibility of things falling apart at any second, which makes Matmos' live shows so compelling.

Last year, the NSFW video for Kirin J. Callinan's "Way To War (WIIW)" caught my attention with its punk rock Lars Von Trier visual choices. Just recently, the same director, Kris Moyes, released a music video for Grizzly Bear's "gun-shy" -- crystallizing what I would say is the best track from the band's latest offering, Shields, into a sputtering-in-time work of natural and "scientific" strangeness.

Expect a compare-and-contrast interview with Moyes about both of these videos in the coming month -- but for now, relish in the animated .gifs and the video's delicious sleight of hand, tripped out subtle magic. Full clip inside, along with an initial statement from Moyes about the work.

"The idea came from a question:- if the creative energy of any living organism could be seen, what would it look like? Ed, Daniel, T and Bear demonstrate where their creative energy is located by extracting their hair, nails, skin, sweat, tears and blood. This is an invitation for a very rare glimpse of what creative energy could look like on a molecular level, if it could be seen.

Is this is where their music comes from?

The 2nd half of the video takes on a more metaphysical or alchemy-like shift. We see the impact they have on their environment, throbbing leaves, boiling a river, steam, hovering in air, lightning bug-like sparkles in the afternoon sun etc.

This turning point in the story came out of a very creative conversation I had with Daniel Rossen and belief I have and I think the band share is everything is connected.

In the filming of this clip we used various scientifically explainable methods known to the natural world, soap film interference, rapid crystallization, splitting of the light spectrum etc to create the impression that these visual phenomena actually comes from them.

Of course this hypothesis would not hold much weight in the various scientific circles, but, it is a good question to ask. Science has tried unsuccessfully to explain where creativity comes from. Why some humans have a creative drive and others do not, why this person can draw but does not have a musical ear, or why this person is better suited to the clarinet and not the guitar, and why some people can play every instrument they come into contact with."

Last year, the NSFW video for Kirin J. Callinan's "Way To War (WIIW)" caught my attention with its punk rock Lars Von Trier visual choices. Just recently, the same director, Kris Moyes, released a music video for Grizzly Bear's "gun-shy" -- crystallizing what I would say is the best track from the band's latest offering, Shields, into a sputtering-in-time work of natural and "scientific" strangeness.
Expect a compare-and-contrast interview with Moyes about both of these videos in the coming month -- but for now, relish in the animated .gifs and the video's delicious sleight of hand, tripped out subtle magic. Full clip inside, along with an initial statement from Moyes about the work.

"The idea came from a question:- if the creative energy of any living organism could be seen, what would it look like? Ed, Daniel, T and Bear demonstrate where their creative energy is located by extracting their hair, nails, skin, sweat, tears and blood. This is an invitation for a very rare glimpse of what creative energy could look like on a molecular level, if it could be seen.
Is this is where their music comes from?
The 2nd half of the video takes on a more metaphysical or alchemy-like shift. We see the impact they have on their environment, throbbing leaves, boiling a river, steam, hovering in air, lightning bug-like sparkles in the afternoon sun etc.
This turning point in the story came out of a very creative conversation I had with Daniel Rossen and belief I have and I think the band share is everything is connected.
In the filming of this clip we used various scientifically explainable methods known to the natural world, soap film interference, rapid crystallization, splitting of the light spectrum etc to create the impression that these visual phenomena actually comes from them.
Of course this hypothesis would not hold much weight in the various scientific circles, but, it is a good question to ask. Science has tried unsuccessfully to explain where creativity comes from. Why some humans have a creative drive and others do not, why this person can draw but does not have a musical ear, or why this person is better suited to the clarinet and not the guitar, and why some people can play every instrument they come into contact with."